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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



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THE UNDYING TORCH 




MARENGO STREET ENTRANCE 
First Baptist Church of Pasadena 



THE UNDYING TORCH 



By JOHN MARVIN DEAN 

Author of " The Day of Trumpets," " The Miracle on Hermon," 
" Evangelism and Social Service," etc. 



Edited by 

ETHEL HAMPTON BLAKE 






PHILADELPHIA 






THE JUDSON PRESS 




BOSTON 


CHICAGO 


LOS ANGELES 


KANSAS CITY 


SEATTLE 


TORONTO 






Copyright, 1925, by 
THE JUDSON PRESS 



Published December, 1925 



P RINTEDINU .S.A. F£B 



©C1A879568 



DEDICATED 

To 

The Memory of 
My First Pastor 

THE REVEREND DOCTOR 
JAMES ARTHUR JOHNSTON 

A Servant of God 

Who Conspicuously Blended 

Greatness of Mind 

With 

Nobility of Character 



The messages comprising this volume were delivered, 
with two or three exceptions, from the pulpit of the First 
Baptist Church of Pasadena. The volume itself is 
issued in connection with the occupation of the new and 
noble meeting-house of that congregation. 

We enter our house of worship as the climax of years 
of aspiration, united effort, and devoted giving. We 
have felt that so beautiful a city as ours deserved of 
us a beautiful and imposing church structure, but we 
feel with even greater emphasis the necessity laid upon 
us to give the glorious Gospel of Christ an environment 
which would suggest something of the beauty and nobility 
of the message of Redemption. 

All glory to the Christ who has led us to victory ! 

May the Spirit of the Lord fill the house of the Lord, 
and may these published messages comprise a part of 
the larger ministry of this devoted California church. 

J. M. D. 

Pasadena, California, 
Christmas Day, 1925. 



By the REV. O. P. GIFFORD, D. D. 

November, 1883— November, 1925. 

Forty-two years — a short space in the life of a church. 

November, 1883 — thirteen Baptists in Pasadena or- 
ganized a Baptist Church. 

November, 1925 — the same church has one thousand 
six hundred members. 

The newly organized church had no building. The 
Methodists opened their building for a four o'clock 
service. 

Later the schoolhouse served as a shelter to the Pil- 
grims. 

Later the Library building shelters history in the 
making. 

A lot was given by Mrs. M. C. Mullins. It was sold 
and a lot on Walnut Street purchased. This was sold, 
and a lot on Fair Oaks and Locust Street was bought 
and a building costing $7,777.77 built and paid for. 

Growth demanded a larger building. A part of the 
present lot was given and a new building, the present 
meeting-house, was erected at a cost of $41,000. 

More land, adjoining, was bought and the first unit, 
costing $370,000, is ready for use. Two more units are 
in the blue-print stage. 



Foreword 



Thirteen members— sixteen hundred members. 

Better even than this, two healthy daughters of the 
First Church share with their mother the honor of the 
Baptist name in Pasadena, the Calvary Church and the 
Tremont Church. 

Welcome guests in a Methodist Church — a new Temple 
costing $370,000. 

Nine pastors have served — one, the ninth, now serving. 

Pastors come and pastors go, but the church, like the 
brook, goes on, nourished by showers from above, broad- 
ening, deepening in power to serve. 

The covenant, unlike the Constitution of the United 
States, has not been amended. 

The main Bible School has kept pace with the church in 
numbers and clamors for new quarters. 

The splendid new Washington Street Chapel has 
already developed a branch Bible School which will 
eventually be Pasadena's fourth white American Baptist 
Church. 

Boston's loss is Pasadena's gain, in the person of 
Herbert Handel, associate pastor, who followed the 
Star of Empire. 

The present pastor, Dr. John Marvin Dean, is funda- 
mental in faith, modern in method, and evangelistic in 
spirit. 

The sermons are a sample of his mental strength and 
spiritual fervor. 

Some years ago a pastor from Richmond spent a 
month in Boston. One day he said to me, " In the 
South, the text is the end of argument and the beginning 
of action. In Boston the text seems to be the beginning 



Foreword 



of argument." The present pastor, though a New En- 
glander by descent, is of the Southern type. 

The proof of truth is not found in argument but in 
action. 

" If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." 

Pasadena, November, 1925. 

Note : The first record made by the clerk of the First 
Baptist Church of Pasadena, dated Sunday, November 7, 
1883, reads as follows : 

In response to a request the Baptists of Pasadena and 
vicinity assembled in the " Good Templars Hall " on Sunday, 
November 7th, 1883, to consider the advisability of organiz- 
ing a church. Rev. S. S. Fisk presided. On motion it was 
unanimously decided to proceed to organization. The fol- 
lowing Covenant was read and adopted. (Here follows the 
covenant referred to by Dr. Gifford.) The following named 
persons joined themselves together by means of their letters 
of dismission from various Baptist Churches: Rev. J. J. 
Woolsey, Rev. S. S. Fisk, Mrs. S. S. Fisk, Henry Fisk, Will 
P. Jacobson, Carrie Jacobson, D. Williams, O. S. Barber, 
Mrs. O. S. Barber, F. C. Quarks, Mrs. Emma Quarles, Mrs. 
M. C. Case, Mrs. Martin Mullins. After the organization the 
Ordinance of Baptism was administered by Rev. S. S. Fisk 
to Miss Jane Frazer and Mrs. Mary E. Clark, and at their 
request they were received into the Church. The hour for 
Sunday School having arrived, further proceedings were post- 
poned for one week. 



(EontPttts 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Poem of the Almighty 1 

II. Christ of the Virgin Born 19 

III. The Balance and the Burden 33 

IV. The Christ We Worship 47 

V. Saved and Certain 63 

VI. Silence in Heaven 85 

VII. The Secret of Greatness 97 

VIII. The Passing World 119 

IX. Four Facets of the Fact of Christ 131 

X. The Second Coming of Our Lord 145 

XL Attended by the Vision Splendid 163 

XII. The Fight with Doubt 173 

XIII. The House of Peace 197 

MISCELLANEOUS MESSAGES 

I. The Orthodox Responsible for Heresy . . 225 
II. The Great Triumvirate 233 

III. Evangelize Europe 245 

IV. The Soul of America 255 

V. An Iloilo Christian 265 

APPENDIX 

Pastors of the First Baptist Church of 

Pasadena 277 



SUuatraftons 

OPPOSITE PAGE 

Marengo Street Entrance of the First Baptist Church 
of Pasadena Frontispiece 

Baptistery and Choir of the First Baptist Church of 

Pasadena 104 

First Baptist Church of Pasadena Viewed from 

Holly Street 212 



B 



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There is no better way to stimulate faith than to study 
the far-reaching program of God in the Epistle to the 
Ephesians. 

There is a story told of Cardinal Manning. He was sub- 
ject at times to great depression of soul. His faith would 
be darkened, and he would be in great agony of mind. On 
one of these occasions he went into a bookshop for a copy 
of his own works, the title of which is " Faith in God." The 
clerk left him to look for the book. Shortly after he 
heard a man's voice calling up from the basement, " Man- 
ning's ' Faith in God ' all gone." 

We are informed that he accepted the message as a re- 
buke from heaven. 

The mighty sweep of God's purposes as revealed in the 
Epistle of the Ascension will strengthen the confidence of 
all believers. 



Stye $Ixintt tff % Almtgtjtg 



"And you did He make alive, when ye were dead through 
your trespasses and sins, wherein ye once walked according to 
the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers 
of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of dis- 
obedience, among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of 
our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and 
were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, 
being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved 
us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us 
alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and 
raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the 
heavenly places, in Christ Jesus; that in the ages to come He 
might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness 
toward us in Christ Jesus; for by grace have ye been saved 
through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, 
not of works, that no man should glory. For we are His 
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which 
God afore prepared that we should walk in them." — Ephesians 
2 : 1-10. 

HE epistle to the Ephesians marks the high- 
est point of the Christian revelation. It 
has well been called the Epistle of the 
Ascension. In its teachings Christian doc- 
trine rises to its utmost height. The very 
landscape of the Ephesians is a continual ascension. The 
apostle in this writing is standing upon the high plateau 
of Christian privilege. He is " in the heavenlies. ,, Below 
him yawns the black and terrifying abyss of lost souls. 
Immediately at his feet are the foothills that may well 
represent the beginnings of the Christian life. The eleva- 

3 




4 The Undying Torch 

tion upon which he stands is that of victory in Christ ; 
victory over sin. Beyond and above him tower infinite 
sunlit heights which allure the eye of the pilgrim ever 
on and upward until the summit of the range is lost in 
the vast nimbus of the glorified life. 

We will first look into the abyss. We will then descend 
into the abyss. Our next movement will be one that 
brings us up out of the depths into the " heavenlies " of 
Christian privilege. Then we will look at the Farther 
Height. And, lastly, we will listen to the apostolic analy- 
sis and application of these movements. 

1. The Abyss 

We are gazing now through the apostolic eyes into the 
moral and spiritual abyss of human life and history. 
There is death in the abyss — " dead through your tres- 
passes and sins." This death is compounded of tres- 
passes against men and sin against God. Burns struck 
the universal note of conscience when he cried, " Man's 
inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." 
There was a day when to quote his words made us quiver 
with feeling; the World War, by its awful shadows, 
makes his indictment pallid. 

As we gaze over the edge of the precipice into the 
awful chasm of moral evil there arises from it a fetid 
atmosphere compounded of the noxious gases of cruel- 
ties, inhumanities, hatreds, lusts, and injustices. No 
historian is brave enough to attempt a complete account, 
even in outline, of the appalling transgressions of man 
against his fellow man. When we turn to the deeper 
matter of sin, as pointed toward the target of the Throne 



The Poem of the Almighty 



of Holiness, we are even more startled. Truly there is 
death in the abyss. 

There is life in the abyss — " Wherein ye once walked/' 
Does this surprise us ? Remember that men may be dead 
to the obligations of justice and holiness and yet be very 
much alive to every selfish interest. " She that liveth 
in pleasure is dead while she liveth." " Thou hast a name 
that thou livest and thou art dead! 3 Have you ever passed 
through a grove of trees whose trunks have been freshly 
girdled ? The whole tree still stands ; only a narrow ring 
of bark has been cut out around the trunk. The forest 
rises in its strength, and in its spreading branches the 
birds of the air are singing. The sunlight filtering 
through the breeze-stirred leaves pleases the eye with a 
thousand patterns of color and of light. The picture is 
one of living delight, yet death is there. The girdled 
trees have been shut off from the sap that seeks to rise 
beneath the bark. Every second of time is freighted with 
dissolution and decay. So the busy, strenuous life of 
wicked men goes recklessly on in the abyss. But the 
rebellious will has separated the soul from God, and death 
is the only issue. " He that believeth not hath been 
judged already." 

There is progression in the abyss — " The course of this 
world." The word " course " suggests duration and direc- 
tion. It is a platitude that there is progression in the 
Christian life; it is as inevitable that there is progression 
in the life of sin. " In the twilight, in the evening, in the 
eye of the night, and the darkness ! " 

There is organization in the abyss — " The prince of the 
spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience." 



6 The Undying Torch 

The selfish life of a sinful world is not unorganized but 
organized. I do not here refer to government itself as an 
evil thing, even in a prevailingly evil population. Gov- 
ernment is a divinely given instinct. The observance of 
law and the maintenance of order are of heavenly origin. 
But alas ! there is every evidence of a fearful misuse 
of this instinct in a mutual and organized rebellion 
against God. " They all with one consent began to make 
excuse.'' There is one known as the prince of this 
world, so denominated by Jesus Christ Himself. He is a 
usurper. He has no rights among the sons of men. 
But, by playing upon their selfishness toward each other 
and their rebellion toward God, he is able to present 
against the forces of righteousness not merely a chaos of 
individual sinners, but a fearful unity of moral indiffer- 
ence and unbelief, and an organized army of active 
opposition to the redemptive program of God. 

We were once there in the abyss ! " Among whom we 
also once lived in the lusts of the flesh, doing the desires 
of the flesh and of the mind." We were all sinners once, 
either gross sinners or subtle sinners. It is true that the 
sensual array themselves against Christ, doing the desires 
of the flesh. 

" Saul Kane," she said, " When next you drink, 
Do me the gentleness to think 
That every drop of drink accursed 
Makes Christ within you die of thirst; 
That every dirty word you say 
Is one more flint upon His way, 
Another thorn about His head, 
Another mock by where He tread, 
Another nail, another cross ; 
All that you are is that Christ's loss." 



The Poem of the Almighty 



But there are even greater sinners than Saul Kane. 
Dante's lowest, icy hell was not for libertines but for the 
economical traitor, Judas, and the assassin, Brutus. It 
is not the sensuality of the First Napoleon which appalls 
us so much as his sensuousness — the prostitution of his 
glorious mind to such miserably little and selfish ends. 
Who have sinned more against God and humanity than 
those who have followed " the desires of the mind," and 
have produced Godless and Christless philosophies, and 
materialistic science, and have sneered at God and the 
Christian revelation in their works of art and literature? 
A drunkard destroys himself; a man of blazing intel- 
ligence, motived by a selfish will, may destroy a multi- 
tude! 

There is wrath in the abyss — " children of wrath." Not 
a sudden crackling of divine anger, but the inevitable 
movement of the nature of God against the attack upon 
His holy will and the invasion of His beneficent purposes 
of righteousness. There can be no thought or act of sin 
that does not release within a moral universe a movement 
of judgment and retribution which may be long in reach- 
ing its objective, but is as inevitable as the fact that sin 
is real. " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked. " 

II. The Descent Into the Abyss 

Having briefly noted the characteristics of human sin 
and pictured it to our minds as a profound abyss, let us 
now observe the action of the God of grace. We have 
been looking downward. We have been gazing at a pic- 
ture of evil fascination until we can perhaps stand its 
horrors and miseries no longer, and we interrupt our- 



8 The Undying Torch 

selves, as Paul in this passage interrupts himself, and lift 
our eyes unto the hills for an answer to the question that 
man's sin raises in the thoughtful mind and in the compas- 
sionate heart. Hear the answer of the apostle. It is a 
progressive and cumulative answer. It pictures a move- 
ment of the eternal God out of the glory and into the 
abyss. Observe the phases of this action : 

First, God. We have looked into the gulf. We are 
now lost in the glory. But all we have to start with is 
the unadorned Name — that significant monosyllable which 
may mean so much or so little to the one who uses it. 

It is a word common both to the street and to the church. 
It may fall from the lips of the blasphemous or the de- 
vout. It may represent merely a mental convenience. 
But in the mind of Paul its utterance immediately de- 
mands amplification and definition. Standing by itself, 
it is a lonesome, uncertain, or even fearful utterance. To 
say God! may be an imprecation, a despair, a fear. But 
Paul immediately throws glory into it. For, observe, 

" God — in mercy." What an addition to a mere ab- 
stract Deity. Mercy! The God of Paul has turned His 
face toward the abyss of human need and transgression. 
To humanity's unspeakable relief it is a face of mercy ! 

" Rich in mercy ! " It is not with a mere touch of 
mercy, a soon-expended sympathy, or a passing interest, 
that the God of Paul turns toward the abyss. It is with 
a wealth of mercy. What a temptation we have here to 
dwell upon the conception of the mercy of God and the 
richness of that mercy. But there is a still further 
unveiling. 

" For His love!" Mercy is suspended justice. Mercy 



The Poem of the Almighty 



may be the act of one apart from ourselves. It does 
not necessitate friendship or fellowship. It has more than 
a tinge of the impersonal. But here we have that warm, 
understandable, intimate word to which every heart re- 
sponds ; the word love. God is coming down now to the 
plane of human understanding! 

" His great love." The apostle here can only refer to 
one thing — that heart and action of the Divine compas- 
sion best expressed by the phrase, " God so loved the 
world that He gave His son." Let us remind ourselves 
of the significance of the word " gave," delivered up, as 
to an altar. 

The Cross is now being lowered into the abyss! 

Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of Thy Cross, 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than that Cross could sound! 

" Wherewith He loved us!' With humble daring the 
apostle ventures to link himself and all believers to the 
beneficent movement of the rescuing God. 

" Even when we were dead through our trespasses ! " 
Here the Infinite Love has reached indeed the lowest level 
of the abyss. 

Measure now the movement of God's grace : 

God! 

Is Merciful 

Plenteous in Mercy 
Loves 

Loves Greatly 
Loves Us 

Though Dead Even to His Love! 

And now observe the third movement. 



10 The Undying Torch 



III. Out of the Depths! 

Here we deal with spiritual resurrection and ascension. 
The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world has 
become the Christ of Calvary. The Cross has revealed 
and applied the Divine compassion of God toward men 
in the abyss. The God of the Incarnation and the Atone- 
ment is discovered to be Himself in the depths, and with 
that discovery the new humanity is born. Observe the 
movement from the abyss to the heavenlies. 

" Made us alive!" What an incalculable step Paul de- 
mands of our minds at this juncture — from death to life! 
It is a vast distance but we cannot conceive of anything 
lying between the two conceptions. Said David, " There 
is but a step between me and death/' Saith the apostle 
to a lost humanity, " There is but a step between thee and 
life." And what a life ! The sun at its zenith makes the 
electric light cast a shadow. The brightest, keenest and 
most alluring thoughts of paganism center about the Gre- 
cian use of this word life! But the glory of its meaning, 
here and in the whole movement of the New Testament 
revelation, is so utterly beyond its splendor in Greek 
philosophy or poetry that in contrast all lesser uses of 
the term are shadowed and shallowed. " He that hath the 
Son hath the life, and he that hath not the Son hath not 
the life." If ever the Greek article called for emphasis 
it is in that declaration — the life! 

I did not think, I did not strive, 
The deep peace burnt my self alive, 
The bolted door had broken in, 
I knew that I had done with sin. 



The Poem of the Almighty 11 

I knew that Christ had given me birth, 
To brother all the souls on earth, 
And every bird and every beast 
Should share the crumbs broke at the feast. 

Oh, glory of the lighted mind, 
How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind. 
The wayside brook, to my new eyes, 
Was babbling out of Paradise; 
The waters, rushing from the rain, 
Were singing, " Christ has risen again." 
I thought all earthly creatures knelt 
From rapture of the joy I felt. 

" Together with Christ." Here the apostle declares 
that the grace of God in man enacts a spiritual resurrec- 
tion as factual as the resurrection of Christ from amongst 
the dead. More than that, that new quality of life which 
we receive upon accepting Christ constitutes an instant 
and indissoluble bond between ourselves and Him. It is 
a life common to Him and ourselves. 

"And raised us up with Him." The resurrection of 
Christ was the acceptance by the Father of every re- 
demption claim that He, the Son, had made. By it He, 
the Son, was transferred from the place of condemnation 
to the place of acceptance. We are not only given life 
eternal and assured of our union with Christ but we 
have here indicated one of the fruits of this union — 
we are accepted in the Beloved. The grace of God has 
here lifted us out of every last lingering shadow of con- 
demnation and declared us to be fully justified by the 
Cross of our Lord. Here is the spiritual privilege which 
astounded Luther. Here is the illumination that opened 
the way for the Reformation. A whole section of history 



12 The Undying Torch 

in Germany, Bohemia, Holland, France, and England is 
but a broad commentary upon this statement of Chris- 
tian privilege. Justification by faith! Accepted in His 
beloved Son! 

" Made us sit down with Him in Heavenly Places." 
If the sixteenth Century rediscovered the Pauline teach- 
ing of justification by faith, and thus enriched the world, 
what would it not mean to- Christian thought and philos- 
ophy if the Twentieth Century would rediscover the phi- 
losophy and dynamic of the doctrine of the Heavenly 
Places as used at this point? The term " Heavenly 
Places " may refer to experiences of God either in time 
or eternity ; it may refer either to heaven or earth, but its 
connection here is plain. It is the present experience and 
privilege of those who have received life from Christ and 
are justified and " accepted in the Beloved. " To sit with 
Christ in Heavenly Places means to be lifted above the 
tyranny of sin's power. It means the sharing of the 
throne of Christ, and enjoyment of fellowship with the 
power of Christ. 

To borrow from another letter of Paul's, it is the 
privilege of the Christian to " reign in life through Christ 
Jesus." Does this involve the removal of our evil na- 
ture? No, God does not give us victory over sin by 
decreasing the number of our enemies, but by increasing 
our reserves ; by placing the resources of Jesus Christ 
at our disposal. From death, then, to life; from life 
to acceptance; from acceptance to victory! We are in- 
deed out of the abyss and looking down upon it from the 
high plateau of the Heavenly Places in Christ Jesus. 
We are rescued, raised and reigning. 



The Poem of the Almighty 13 

IV. The Farther Height 

I remind you again that the understanding of the 
Ephesian epistle is a matter of landscape. The apostle's 
point of view is taken from the life of moral victory in 
Christ. He looks downward over the beginnings of the 
Christian life to the lip of the abyss and even describes 
for us the abyss itself. He then turns and points us to 
the summits which rise above him, their peaks lost in the 
everlasting glory. The apostolic mind sees the great re- 
demptive work of the ages carried up into the vast ex- 
panding future of the redeemed humanity. Out of the 
abyss, onto the plateau, and, now, on into the alluring 
colors of the Farther Height. Observe his phrases : 

u The ages to cornel " What a phrase! The advanc- 
ing aeons! Some men are content with a single day; to 
think of the morrow is to them an irritation. Others 
permit themselves to name the word " eternity " but 
shrink from any attempt to conceive of it. It is to them 
a final thought, a term of defeated speculation. But the 
bold mind of the apostle surveys with serenity the world 
to come and discovers it to be a procession of ages march- 
ing to meet the soul, each one of them more glorious than 
its predecessor ! 

His argument seems to be that to the Christian each 
new day of time brings a further unveiling of spiritual 
privilege in Christ. And in eternity this progressive 
revelation will be continued. The coming ages will be 
ministers of God in the education of His people in the 
possibilities of their redeemed nature — " That in the ages 
to come He might show [not " exhibit " merely, but as 



14 The Undying Torch 

the word in the original indicates, reveal and share] the 
exceeding riches of His undeserved favor in kindness 
toward us in Christ Jesus ! " Dr. R. F. Horton has 
packed a whole philosophy in a single sentence when he 
says, " The resources of the Christian life are simply — 
Jesus Christ." It appears that the amazing things re- 
vealed to us in Christ in this life are but the first lessons 
in a school of blessedness from which eternity itself will 
never grant us a graduation. It is an overwhelming 
thought that the most fascinating study possible to the 
human mind — that bf personality — is to be our eternal 
occupation, and that Personality is to be God the Son. 
It is impossible to follow the implications of such a 
thought; implications of transcendent fellowship; the ca- 
pabilities of perfected service; the fascinations and sur- 
prises of eternal progress. 

V. The Apostolic Analysis 

The apostle has completed the Divine Movement. He 
has pictured the grace of God lifting men from the 
abyss and has dared to give us a glimpse into eternity 
itself. He now analyzes the whole movement in two 
phrases. The picture that he has felt himself impelled 
by the Holy Spirit to paint of humanity ruined, redeemed, 
rescued, raised, and reigning, forces him to the conclusion 
that " by grace have ye been saved through faith." Only 
by the undeserved favor of an infinitely gracious God 
could the sinning soul of man have entered into the won- 
drous experiences and privileges of the Christian life. He 
feels it so deeply, so intensely, that he is fearful lest the 
least touch of human meriting should becloud the thought 



The Poem of the Almighty 15 

of man concerning his own redemption. " Not only are 
you saved by undeserved favor," he states, " but the very 
faith by which you lay hold of the proper help of Christ 
is itself a gift from without you. By grace are ye saved 
through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift 
of God." Let us not speculate as to whether this gift of 
faith is bestowed at the moment when a man is regener- 
ated or lies latent within every human soul ready to re- 
spond when the Christ is presented. In either case the 
apostolic statement is proved ; it is the gift of God. 

The second statement that sums up the apostolic 
analysis and explanation of God's grace is, " We are His 
workmanship." That is, after reviewing the redemption 
of mankind, his justification and glorification, Paul con- 
cludes that the whole matter is a premeditated and finished 
work of God. You will observe that he uses a Greek term 
poiema, from which we have mined our English word 
" poem." " We are His poem! " cries the apostle, " His 
thoughtfully considered and finished work." No choice 
of words could be happier. The history of the redeemed 
humanity is indeed a "finished fabric," a carefully 
wrought out poem. Every saved man is himself an epic 
of redemption. He fulfils every requirement and illus- 
trates every characteristic of a great poem. To create 
a great poem there must be the inspiration of a mighty 
passion. Homer's passion for Greece gave us " The 
Iliad." Dante's passion for Italy gave us " The Divine 
Comedy." Milton's passion for the Word gave us 
" Paradise Lost." The redeemed man is the product of 
the passion of God's love for the lost. The redeemed 
man is God's beloved. 



16 The Undying Torch 

A great poem too must be a finished work — carefully, 
not roughly, wrought out ; for it must bear the inspection 
of the centuries. Is not our redemption so? Does not 
our mind leap to the victorious cry of the Christ, " It is 
finished ! " and do we not agree that in its every part the 
redemptive work of God is exact, flawless and perfectly 
fitted to its great end? Has there yet been discovered 
a fault in the work of our Incarnate, Atoning, and Risen 
Lord? A great poem must also contain within it the 
strength of tragedy. No mighty work of genius can 
take the first rank if it ignores the tragic elements of 
human life. Does not every redeemed man contain tragic 
memories? And does not his every virtue blossom like 
passion flowers from a soil watered by the tears and 
blood of an agonizing Christ? A great poem, too, must 
have rhythm and the possibilities of music. Well, can two 
redeemed men meet and part without a song? The Sal- 
vationist shrills her song in the gutter, destined in the 
end to reinforce the chanting of the glorified throng in the 
rendition of heaven's oratorio, " The Song of Moses and 
of the Lamb." 

The great poem must suggest more than it expresses. 
It must fire the imagination. It must sting us with such 
a splendor of thought that we leap beyond the words into 
a thousand inferences that bless and burn. It is at once 
the joy and the despair of the redeemed man that his lips 
can never tell the fulness of his heart or describe the depths 
of his experience. He must appeal to the imagination. A 
great poem, too, must be witting to wait for its audience 
and its appreciation. The redeemed man is indeed the 
finished product of an inspiration of God's own nature, 



The Poem of the Almighty 17 

but the world will not acknowledge him as such. He must 
be patient. " The whole creation groaneth and travaileth 
in pain together until now. For the earnest expectation 
of the creation waiteth for the unveiling of the sons of 
God" 

" We are, then/' says the apostle, in his analysis, " the 
finished product of God; His workmanship; His fine 
fabric; His inspired, living poem." 

VI. The Apostolic Application 

" Created in Christ Jesus unto good works, that God 
hath before prepared (planned) that we should walk in 
them/' 

Here we are back on earth again. The redeemed man, 
it is true, is a poem, but he is also a peon, a pawn, a 
peasant, a servant, a man of the soil! Paul very rightly 
and wisely and sanely leaves as his last impression in our 
paragraph-text the thought of the redeemed man in the 
service of his Redeemer. God's finished work at work 
for others ! " They that wait upon the Lord shall mount 
up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and not be weary ; 
they shall walk! 3 We are not redeemed in order that we 
might pursue ecstatic vision and grow contemptuous of 
the toiling and soiling of common tasks. We are re- 
deemed that we may become redeemers. " We have 
received the spirit of power and love and discipline." 

Saith the Sage of Chelsea, who was also the Worker of 
Chelsea : 

" The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. 
1 Know thyself ! ' Long enough has that poor self of thine 
tormented thee. Thou wilt never get to 'know* it! Think it 



18 The Undying Torch 

not thy business, this knowing thyself ! Thou art an unknowable 
individual. Know what thou canst work at and work at it like 
a Hercules! That will be thy better plan." 

Paul lifts this injunction higher than Carlyle; not thy 
better plan, but " God hath before planned." 

So, ye finished work of God, ye product of His highest 
and most loving thought, bend yourselves to the common 
tasks, for ye are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus 
unto good works, that God hath before planned that we 
should walk in them. 

Oh Christ who holds the open gate, 
Oh Christ who drives the furrows straight, 
Oh Christ, the plow, Oh Christ, the laughter 
Of holy white birds flying after. 



II 



Otynat of tip Itrgttt lorn 



When we think of the Christ of the Virgin Born we are 
reminded of the words of Phillips Brooks: 

"Jesus Christ, the condescension of divinity and the 
exaltation of humanity." 

David Russell of South Africa, ex-chaplain of the Black 
Watch, once reminded me of the threefold appeal of Christ 
to Zaccheus. 

Christ looked up into the tree and said : " Zaccheus ! " 

Said Zaccheus to himself, " He knows me ! " 

" Make haste and come* down! " 

"Ah, he wants me," thought Zaccheus. 

" This day I must abide in thy house ! " 

Joy of joys! "He needs me!" thought Zaccheus. No 
wonder he came down joyfully and entertained the Master 
lavishly ! 

Christ in His incarnation honors humanity by becoming 
dependent upon it, and He still knows and wants and needs 
each man of us. 



OlffriBi nf ttp> Utrgin Sent 

They shall call His name Immanuel."— Matt. 1 : 23. 

O highest, strongest, sweetest woman-soul, 

Thou holdest in the compass of thy grace 

All the strange fate and passion of thy race. 

Of the old primal curse thou knowest the whole; 

Thine eyes, too wise, are heavy with the dole, 

The doubt, the dread, of all this human maze; 

Thou, in the virgin morning of thy days, 

Hast felt the bitter waters o'er thee roll. 

Yet thou knowest, too, the terrible delight, 

The still content and solemn ecstasy, 

Whatever sharp, sweet bliss thy kind may know. 

Thy spirit is deep for pleasure or for woe. 

O sang Richard Watson Gilder, feeling within 
himself something of the wonder with which 
we must ever approach the solemn mystery 
of Mary and her Holy Son. 

Some years ago a brilliant Christian thinker 
was asked to contribute an article, dealing with the per- 
sonality of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the pages of the 
Encyclopedia Britannica. In due time the article ap- 
peared. It was then discovered that the most amazing 
fact about our Saviour had not been mentioned — His 
sinlessness. 

The dazzling white light of the Redeemer's personality 
and earthly ministry smites the mind of the most casual 
reader of the Gospels, provided that casual reader be 
candid. No matter where you touch those marvelous 
three and a half years of public ministry — a ministry 

21 




22 The Undying Torch 

carried on in the midst of indescribable confusion and 
against an ever-increasing opposition that was nothing less 
than venomous — the same flawless perfection is found, 
and stainless integrity. 

Even Mohammedanism declares the sinlessness of the 
Christ and that He will some day judge Mohammed him- 
self. This need cause no surprise; the most remote ac- 
quaintance with the name and fame of Jesus of Nazareth 
exacts this tribute of superhuman flawlessness to His 
manhood and His ministry. 

When by penitence and faith a man not only knows 
Jesus Christ intellectually but is touched by the power and 
presence of the Omnipresent Master, then the fact of 
Christ's sinlessness passes through the realm of the mind 
into the holy of holies of a man's heart, and he not only 
admires but worships. 

We speak of the sinlessness of Christ because it predis- 
poses us to faith in His preexistence and His Virgin 
Birth. 

When we ride over the desolated deserts of the West 
and stumble upon a rusty, weed-grown railway, we may 
only be able to see a few miles of its road-bed, but we 
quickly erect in our minds a vision of its terminal. Such 
an insignificant road must, we rightly judge, lead to a 
half-abandoned mining-camp or some desolate town un- 
moved by the high tides of civilization. But if, on the 
other hand, our trail intersects a beautifully laid " over- 
land line," its road-bed well kept, its rails of the sturdiest 
steel and sharply glinting from constant use, we are confi- 
dent that far to the east of us there arises the stately 
buildings and vast facilities of a great terminal, and that 



Christ of the Virgin Born 23 

to the west of us, beyond the ranges, there is another 
mighty terminal to match it. 

He who touches the line of Christ's perfect ministry 
and personality at any vital point of the Gospel narratives 
and carefully weighs the significance of what he there dis- 
covers, will find not the slightest difficulty in believing 
that at the beginning of that earthly ministry there was a 
Virgin Birth, and at the end of that ministry there was a 
death-conquering Resurrection. 



The Incarnation — the coming into human form and 
flesh of the pre-existent Saviour — was the answer to a 
universal desire on the part of humankind. Whatever 
may be our interpretation of the declaration of the 
Prophet Haggai, the God-man was " the Desire of all 
nations." (Hag. 2:7.) 

The record of the Virgin Birth of our Lord has been 
attacked on the ground that heathen and pagan religions 
enshrine the same idea. Christians are sometimes re- 
minded that stories of miraculous generation have no 
novelty. Buddha and Plato, and Augustus Caesar, and 
Zoroaster and Lao-Tsze, all were claimed by some to be 
virgin-born, although they made no such claim for them- 
selves. Certain members of the Greek Pantheon were 
also said to have nothing less than a heavenly 
paternity. But such a criticism is a sad misinter- 
pretation of the pagan mind. These myths are the 
confirmation of the Gospel narrative. They are the 
pathetic evidences of a universal cry for a redemptive 
unveiling of God, a passionate longing for a Hero, or a 



24 The Undying Torch 

Prince, or a God, who would partake both of the human 
and the Divine, one of whom we could say without de- 
lusion, " Immanuel — God with us ! " 

It is Cocker who reminds us that the idea of " a pure 
spiritual Essence without form and without motion, per- 
vading all and transcending all, is too vague and abstract 
to yield us comf ort, ,, and that, therefore, the need of an 
incarnation " became, consciously or unconsciously, the 
' desire of nations/ " 

The very fact that the idea of an incarnation was not 
unfamiliar, that it was no strange thought to the pagan 
mind which had created the numberless metamorphoses 
of Grecian mythology, the faith in the Lamas of Krishna, 
and the Avatars of Vishnu and of Dagon, presents not a 
difficulty but a secondary reason for faith in the Virgin 
Birth of our Lord. 

Shall we, whose souls have been lighted by the Incarna- 
tion, discard that torchlike truth? 

If we commit that blasphemy we will discover that the 
necessities of the human mind and heart eventually will 
make us victims of some religious system which will 
present to us in other forms, and without proper attesta- 
tion, the mystery of a virgin birth. 

Man is so made that an incarnation fits his need as the 
flower fits the stem. 

You may recall the profound suggestion of Neander 

that 

at the bottom of these myths there is an earnest desire, insepar- 
able from man's spirit, for participation in the Divine nature as 
its true life — its anxious longing to pass the gulf which separates 
the God-derived soul from its original — its wish, even though 
unconscious, to secure that union with God which alone 



Christ of the Virgin Born 25 

can remove human need and which Christianity shows us as 
a living reality. Nor can we be astonished to find the facts of 
Christianity anticipated in poetic form, embodying in imaginative 
creations the innate, yet indistinct cravings of the spirit, in the 
mythical elements of the old religions, when we remember that 
human nature itself, and all the forms of its development, as well 
as the whole course of human history, were intended by God to 
find their full accomplishment in Christ. 

II 

The Incarnation was the meeting of human limitation. 
Cowper reminds us that " faults in the life breed errors 
in the brain." The individual mind and the mind of the 
race collectively have alike been impaired by sin. Man 
finds his greatest difficulty in endeavoring to think prop- 
erly of God. 

It is true that Nature has never ceased to speak, from 
the day of the first responsible man until this present 
hour — whispering, flaming, thundering, the name and the 
glory of the Living God. 

" The Himalayas/' cries John Henry Barrows upon his 
return from India, " are the raised letters upon which 
we blind children place our fingers and read the name of 
God." 

But nature's message, infinitely varied though it be, if 
taken alone, has fatal omissions. Paul, in opening up 
his great argument in the Epistle to the Roman Church, 
declares that " the invisible things of God since the cre- 
ation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived 
through the things that are made." But he immediately 
follows with a limitation of Nature's office by saying 
that these things that we see through the telescope of 
Nature are " the everlasting power and divinity of God." 



26 The Undying Torch 

Seas and shores, wheat-filled valleys and naked heights, 
bacilli in the test-tube and stars in the night sky, crawling 
lizard and screaming gull, distilling shower and fright- 
ful tornado, rending claw and blossoming fruit, human 
life and human death — all these alike declare that God is 
and that God is infinitely great. Only by a dishonest 
selection of facts from Nature can we go much beyond 
this. 

The universe declares that God is, but it takes an In- 
carnate Saviour to teach men that blazing fact which 
made the mind and heart of John the Beloved flame to 
his latest hour on earth — God is Love! Aye, there is a 
God and His greatness overwhelms the mind. But what 
is His character ? What is His attitude toward men? 
What are His dealings to be with human guilt? What 
is His will for the race? 

An interpreter must speak two languages. An Incar- 
nate Christ, who is both human and divine, alone can 
meet the limitations of the human mind and heart, and 
alone can become a true Mediator. 

A man in a fog cries out in fear as a great distorted 
giant form clutches at him. But brought face to face with 
this apparent giant, the thinning fog reveals his dear- 
est friend ! Thus it has been with some of us in our sci- 
entific reading. The fact and figure of God grows in 
immensity but in the same process becomes remote. We 
recognize the overwhelming power of God, but we are 
made to feel both troubled and forsaken. With what 
delight, then, do we behold in the Incarnation our Elder 
Brother, Jesus Christ ! With what relief do we hear Him 
say : " Truly I am one of you. Feel me and see that this is 



Christ of the Virgin Born 27 

no illusion. Yet without me was not anything made that 
was made. I am behind the breaking surf, the rising con- 
tinents, the wasting mountains, the million species of life, 
and the fifteen hundred million visible worlds that men 
call stars. Behold, it is I ; be not afraid." 

Ill 

The Incarnation, however, was more than the meeting 
of a human limitation; it was the unveiling of God's 
thought and plan for man. The Incarnation reveals God's 
objective for the race. 

The cry of the ages has been for a redemptive unveil- 
ing of God. But the ages had also pleaded for the un- 
veiling of a Man. Stanton, inspired by his hour of 
devastating grief, witnessed the last breath of the dying 
Lincoln and said, " Now he belongs to the Ages." It is 
those aspects of the life and death of Lincoln which 
remind us of the Christ that make such an utterance a 
fitting one. Christ Himself is the Heir of the Ages, and 
the long, slow centuries of human history are His posses- 
sion. He is the candle set in the heavenly window to 
guide man's moral wanderings back to the Father's house. 
But He is also the Pattern of Righteousness, the Exem- 
plar, the Model, the Finality. " All things were created 
unto Him," declares Paul. That is, as we should render 
Paul's meaning, toward Him. 

How pathetic has been the search of the race for a 
perfect character or even a leadership on which men may 
depend ! 

The chiefest heartbreak of history is the long succession 



28 The Undying Torch 

of betrayals of noble and progressive movements on the 
part of leaders whose sins overthrew both them and those 
who trusted in them. Alexander and Caesar, Henry IV 
and Napoleon I, illustrate one phase of this ever-recurring 
betrayal. In the less dramatic worlds of Philosophy 
and Art and Economics, the review is equally dishearten- 
ing. With what relief then do we see the torch of the 
Incarnation lifted, and hear the Ages echo and re-echo 
the cry of Pilate, who knew not how great a thing he said, 
"Behold the Man!" 

If I were to attempt to condense this particular mean- 
ing of the surpassing miracle of Bethlehem within the 
compass of a single phrase, I would write it thus — After 
an incredible travail of unnumbered races and aspirations 
and epochs, the world has found a MAN at last! 

It is in the eyes of This Man that we read the judgment 
of all men. 

The wickedness of the ages is reviewed by His stain- 
lessness ; the folly of the ages is reviewed by His wisdom ; 
the misery of the ages is reviewed by His peace; the 
injustice of the ages is reviewed by His righteousness ; the 
weakness of the ages is reviewed by His strength. He is 
our condemnation. 

And yet, the Incarnate Christ is not our condemnation 
only, but our Hope; for, so surely as there is an oper- 
ation of grace, moving, despite all opposition, toward an 
incredibly bright Consummation for the race, so surely 
shall those who follow Him be like Him, " for they shall 
see Him as He is." The destiny of the redeemed hu- 
manity is Christ. And to follow Him (to use the phrase 
of H. G. Wells) is to " essay an incredible happiness." 



Christ of the Virgin Born 29 

IV 

And now it is of final importance that we observe that 
both the fact and the method of the Incarnation were 
evidential of the Christ's moral supremacy — His unique 
holiness. 

There are those who sneer at us because we worship 
One Who entered in so lowly a fashion the gateway of 
human life. Had the Christ leaped full-panoplied from 
the skies to the palace of the Caesars, these critics might 
have believed on Him. But the Babe of Bethlehem evokes 
their disdain. And yet how strange it is that the suprem- 
acy and Deity of our Lord should be attacked upon this 
ground. 

The root of all sin is pride ; there is not an iniquity but 
can be traced to arrogance. The root of all virtue is 
humility ; there is not a flower of righteousness that grows 
in any other soil. " What is the first thing in religion ? " 
was asked of Augustine. " Humility," he replied. " And 
the second ? " " Humility." " And the third ? " " The 
third is also humility," he said. It is this virtue that our 
Lord supremely exemplified in His Virgin Birth. He is 
the pre-existent Lord of the Universe. He is without 
human paternity. Yet He chooses to enter human life in 
the form of a babe. It is this very approach of His that 
predisposes us to worship Him! Those who have knelt 
at Calvary find no difficulty in kneeling at Bethlehem. 
And those who do not kneel at Bethlehem will be less apt 
to kneel at Calvary. 

Oh, let us then rejoice with wise and thoughtful trust! 
Let us joy in the heavenly humility of the Incarnation ! 



30 The Undying Torch 

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable, 

And that far- beaming blaze of majesty, 

Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council-table 

To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, 

He laid aside, and, here with us to be, 

Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day, 

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. 

Let us scorn to bow in acquiescence to the intellectual 
fad of the passing hour — the corroding criticism of the 
holy Virgin Birth of our Lord. 

If the vain winds of unbelief do not rattle at one door, 
they will at another. 

Let us be wise enough to see in that Virgin Birth not 
a point of weakness in the Christian position but a tower 
of impregnable strength. Let us echo the angelic song, 
our hearts filled with indescribable gladness, that heaven's 
richest gift to man, an Incarnate Saviour, has come to 
human life in such a way and by such a manner as only 
God Himself would choose. And let us hasten with our 
gifts to Bethlehem. 

A careless tourist, being shown the very piano of Bee- 
thoven, seated herself before the instrument and began 
to pick out, without either talent or reverence, one of the 
great composer's more popular creations. The caretaker, 
standing near, shifted from one foot to the other in 
evident distress. At last he remarked: 

" Paderewski was here a short while ago." 

" Oh," said the tourist, " I suppose he played upon this 
very piano." 

" No," said the caretaker, " he was invited to do so, but 
he said, ' I am not worthy/ " 

And who, I ask you, shall be worthy to speak of the 



Christ of the Virgin Born 31 

surpassing mystery and glory of the Incarnation? And 
who shall dare to make the pilgrimage to Bethlehem with- 
out summoning up within himself all the possibilities of 
praise and reverence ? 

Ring out, ye crystal spheres! 

Once bless our human ears, 

If ye have power to touch our senses so; 

And let your silver chime, 

Move in melodious time; 

And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow; 

And with this ninefold harmony 

Make up full consort to the angelic symphony. 



Ill 



"HOW TO EASE ONE'S LOAD 

" The camel, at the close of day, 

Kneels down upon the sandy plain 
To have his burden lifted off 
And rest to gain. 

" My soul, thou too should to thy knees 
When daylight draweth to a close, 
And let thy Master lift the load 
And grant repose. 

" Else how couldst thou tomorrow meet, 
With all tomorrow's work to do, 
If thou thy burden all the night 
Didst carry through? 

" The camel kneels at break of day 

To have his guide replace his load; 
Then rises up anew to take 
The desert road. 

" So thou shouldest kneel at morning's dawn 
That God may give thee daily care, 
Assured that He no load too great 
Will make thee bear." 

— British Weekly. 




ttty* Saiattr? unh tip Ittrtett 

" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; 
for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto 
your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." — 
Matt. 11 : 28-30. 

ONG ago some unknown thinker perfected 
a wonderful invention. For centuries the 
human race had been carrying heavy 
burdens. All about this thoughtful man 
were multitudes of laborers, faint and weary, 
traveling on foot because they were far too poor to own 
an ox or a camel or an ass. Their backs were bowed with 
heavy loads. If they traded, they carried their bales of 
cloth or their sheaves of grain upon their backs or heads. 
If they builded houses, they pushed and pulled the heavy 
stones into place with their hands. Thousands of them 
were pitiful slaves, the very property of others. 

In those days great cities and public; works were con- 
ceived by the rulers and the masters, and it seemed as 
though all but the rich and powerful would grow to be 
bowed down like the beasts, and the lowered eyes of the 
race would be fixed stolidly upon the dust of the road. 

Then came this wondrous discovery. The thinker dis- 
covered that by dividing a heavy load into two equal parts 
and hanging these two burdens by ropes from the two 
ends of a stick placed across the shoulder, by this simple 
means the task of the burden-bearer was made much 
easier. 

35 



36 The Undying Torch 

Of course the stick would have to be whittled so as to 
balance properly over the shoulder, and the weights hang- 
ing from it before and behind the toiler would need to 
be nicely equalized. Then, once you got started with your 
load, and in the rhythm of a steady step or trot, the 
burdens swinging on their ropes like pendulums seemed 
to lift the carrier along and the weight on the shoulder 
grew astonishingly light. 

This invention grew, in time, to have a name. It was 
called a yoke. In the Greek language the word for yoke 
meant also a balance or a pair of scales because the two 
were much alike. 

In the sixth chapter of the Apocalypse we are told of a 
black horse. " And he that sat thereon had a balance in 
his hand. And I heard a voice saying, A measure of 
wheat for a shilling and three measures of barley for a 
shilling. " In our text above this same word thus trans- 
lated balance occurs. But now it is translated by the 
English word yoke. " Take my yoke upon you." 

You will notice that this is not an ox-yoke, but a man- 
yoke. 

The old-time scales were composed of a slender piece 
of metal bored at the middle with a hole in which a ring 
was placed. From each end of this metal bar was hung 
by fine chains a metal disk or cup. When the ring was 
held up the two cups balanced each other, and the incense 
or other substance to be weighed was placed in one cup 
and its equivalent weight in the other. 

Hold the picture of this ancient balance in mind a mo- 
ment and think now of the man-yoke. It too balanced — 
over the shoulder of the burden-bearer. It was composed 



The Balance and the Burden 37 

not of metal but of light, tough wood. From either end 
there hung, not by chains but by ropes, two equal pendant 
burdens. 

The scales and the yoke were made on the same 
principle of the balance. In fact they were both balances. 

Sometimes the yoke was carved to fit the neck and the 
two burdens were carried suspended on the right and 
left. Water was often thus carried — one pail on either 
side, the hands being used to steady the ropes holding the 
buckets. 

Oftener, however, the yoke was merely curved to fit 
over the shoulder and the two burdens balanced, one in 
front and one behind the carrier. 

Countless millions of the poor of all nations, the coolies 
of ancient Egypt and modern China, of ancient Syria and 
modern India, have journeyed under these helpful yokes. 
I have myself used one in far-off Malaysia and was 
amazed at the weight they enabled a man to transport. 
The ancient world might well bless the man who invented 
the yoke. He was the Eli Whitney of his day. 

It is this ancient man-yoke that shall illuminate the 
tender words of our Lord Jesus Christ as He speaks to 
those of us who are toiling and heavily burdened. 

Observe these words with care. 

" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest." 

The Saviour is here speaking of those who are so 
burdened that the only proper picture of them is that of a 
procession of people passing by the highroad to the 
market-town, each one carrying his produce or merchan- 
dise on his shoulder-balance. It is rare indeed in these 



38 The Undying Torch 

days to see men carrying their tools, much less their ma- 
terials, to work. Even a lunch-basket is growing dis- 
tasteful. Our working people labor but they are not seen 
toiling to their work heavy laden. In the Oriental world 
it is still a common sight to see men carrying their stock 
of goods toilsomely to the place of barter. They were 
those who both " labored and were heavy laden." 

Now and then in the Saviour's day some would pass 
Him on horse-back or in camel caravan. But only a very 
few. For the world of that time was sharply divided into 
the few who rode and the many who were ridden. The 
great multitude were of the toiling and burdened and 
lowly-hearted class. 

Now in our verse the Lord Jesus is standing by the 
hard roadway of life, and He is graciously selecting the 
poor folk who are toiling past, some veritably staggering 
under crushing burdens. Hear His words again, His 
invitation of tender concern : 

" Come unto Me, and I will give you rest! " 

How intimate an invitation! And it is more intimate 
than it sounds in our English version. It may well be 
made more tender still. " Come unto Me; and / will 
rest you/' 

. I have seen one laboring man ease another man's bur- 
den down to the ground. How deftly and gently and 
without wrench or jar have I seen one coolie do this for 
another ! 

Christ is saying: 

"Ye toilers of life, ye who are burdened and chafed 
and worn ; turn aside to Me by the edge of the way, and I 
will ease your burdens down. I will authorize you to rest. 



The Balance and the Burden 39 

I will grant you a blessed respite, a time of recreation. 
Bond-servants of life's labor, / mill rest you!' 

J|S JJC * # * 

Then, having rested His toilers, and give them a new 
lease for living, He speaketh a further word : 

" Take my yoke upon you/' 

What ? Resume the hard road again ? Yes, they must 
again take up their tasks, but not in their old yokes. They 
had been working for themselves or for other masters, 
and had borne the yokes that they themselves had 
fashioned or the yokes their masters had distributed to 
them. Now that they have broken their journey at His 
invitation and are being sent forth under His authority, 
they are to bear His yoke. 

We have seen that the yoke was an invention to ease the 
labor of life. It was a help, a convenience, a blessing to 
the toiler. When Christ offers His yoke, He is offering 
His wise, inventive aid. To take His yoke meaneth to 
accept His strength, His wisdom, His very method of 
living and laboring. 

" And learn of Me, for I am meek and lomly in heart" 

Watch carefully here. Here is a tenderness that we 
must not miss. The Lord is asking that those whom He 
has rested and whom He has equipped with a new yoke 
shall, before they resume the road, learn of Him, or as 
the term means, be informed by Him. And He gives as 
His authority as an instructor of toilers, the credential 
that He is " meek and lowly in heart." 

In other words, He offers to instruct them as to how 
to carry their burdens and conduct their journey, and His 
warrant for it is that He is one of them. 



40 The Undying Torch 

He is qualified to instruct them, for He is a humble 
burden-bearer Himself. 

In the time of Christ there were three classes. There 
were the rulers and princes who rode upon horses. They 
were the " high and mighty." There were the busy mer- 
chants who rode from market-town to market-town, on 
asses and camels. They were the " wise and prudent." 
And there were the great mass of common folk, laborers 
and farmers and slaves, who not only walked the trails 
and highways, but carried the chief burdens of civilization 
upon their backs. They were " the meek and lowly " — 
the despised proletariat. For them the burdens, for their 
masters the privileges of life. It is to them that our 
Lord seems particularly to address Himself. " I too 
am of the meek and lowly. I, too, am a Burden-bearer. 
Even now I shoulder your sorrows and sins on my way to 
the Cross ! " 

Only a man in a yoke knows the tricks of a yoke. 

Only a coolie knows the neck of a coolie. 

There is the shaping of the yoke to know. 

There is the adjusting of the burdens to know. 

There is the weight of the burdens to determine. 

There is the art of stopping without jar. 

There is the finer art of starting without strain. 

There is the steadiness of gait to be acquired. 

There is endurance to be developed. 

There is a highway to know and markets to understand 
and other toilers to deal with in the bitter press of cease- 
less competing. 

" Learn of Me," crieth our Blessed Lord, " for I am 
one of you. I am of your class and I know how to counsel 



The Balance and the Burden 41 

and patiently teach you. I am Myself a Toiler and I, too, 
bear a Burden. I place all My wisdom on the way of 
life at your disposal. Learn of Me. Let Me inform 
you." 

And now cometh a very tender word indeed : 

" And ye shall find rest unto your souls/' 

This word rest should be both limited and expanded in 
our minds. 

It does not denote an end of the journey. It means an 
intermission. For an example of this use of the word, 
think of the conception in the Apocalypse of the four liv- 
ing creatures. It is said of them that " They have no 
rest day and night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord 
God, the Almighty ; Who was and Who is and Who is to 
come." These creatures of praise had no intermission — 
no recess. They ceaselessly praised. 

In classic Greek, this same word is used of soldiers 
halting for a brief rest while on the march. The march 
is to be resumed, and the campaign is not over. They are 
but halting for the purpose of gaining strength for what 
lies ahead — a temporary respite. 

Holding this limitation in mind, let us expand the word 
as well as limit it. The word rest here means not merely 
a rest, but a resting-place. By putting these two thoughts 
together, the Saviour is observed to say : 

" Learn of Me ; and ye shall find the places of tempo- 
rary rest." 

That is just His meaning. 

On many ancient highroads in the olden times, and to 
this very day in some lands, there were placed at conve- 
nient intervals " resting-stones." In some countries these 



42 The Undying Torch 

places of rest were built of bamboo, being low platforms 
of that material. 

There was a sufficient reason for these resting-places. 
Coolies bearing the laden yoke find the greatest strain 
comes upon them when they start or stop. This is be- 
cause the muscles of the back are strained to their utmost 
as the body straightens up under the yoke and swings the 
burden free of the ground. It is all in the lifting, not the 
carrying. 

So these " resting-stones " are placed at convenient in- 
tervals along the highroads,, that the burdens may be slid 
upon them and the journey resumed with the back of the 
carrier held erect. 

It is a gracious relief merely to stop and rest without 
the torture of the lowering and lifting of the sometimes 
enormous weights swinging on the yoke. 

It is to these places of temporary relief that our Lord 
here refers. 

" Learn of Me/' He saith, " for I am of the carriers 
myself and I can instruct you as to the right road to take, 
and if you accept my directing, you will find resting-places 
all along the way. Ye shall find rest unto your souls. " 

* * JJS # * 

Then follows the double climax of this great invitation : 
" For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light/' 
It is to be greatly feared that when the yoke appeared 
in the ancient world, men finding they could carry bigger 
loads with the yoke than without it, used the yoke as a 
provocation rather than a blessing. They seized the op- 
portunity to load themselves or others with a larger, more 
staggering burden. 



The Balance and the Burden 43 

In marked contrast to this is the behavior of the 
Saviour. " Not only," said He, " is my yoke fitted skil- 
fully to the shoulders of all my disciples so that it will 
not chafe or deform, but the burden I assign to each 
is far lighter than the burdens the worldling insists upon 
staggering under. Those who come to Me and do My 
will shall find that My yoke is easy and My burden is 
light." 

Now for a moment let us sketch in the completed in- 
terpretative picture, and then we shall be at liberty to 
apply its tender appeal to our burdened lives. 

See then, a Stranger of noble bearing, yet meek and 
lowly in heart, standing by the roadside. There is a light, 
well-fitted yoke by His side and a burden just sizeable 
enough to be honest and steadying. Hear Him call out 
to the over-burdened, anxious yoke-men who are passing 
Him on their way to trade, " Come here to Me, and I will 
ease your burdens down." Observe that some of them 
heed Him and halt, and that He tenderly assists them in 
lowering their loads. Then observe when after a gracious 
rest they rise and reluctantly view the road again, that He 
insists upon furnishing them with a yoke as easy as His 
own and substitutes for their clumsy burdens others as 
precious but far less weighty. Then note that He counsels 
earnestly with them, shows each how best to carry his 
burden, points out the way that promises the surest 
arrival, and finally, accompanies them Himself ! 

This is the picture of the Toiler's Text. 

It remains for us to apply its gracious appeal to our 
own overburdened lives. Ye toiling, moiling sons of 
men! Heed the Voice that entreats you. Life hath its 



44 The Undying Torch 

trying tasks and its pressing burdens. The honest man 
soon selects a generous load. The shirker finds that his 
load is of a different sort but is even greater in weight 
before the journey is ended. Living, whether it be sinful 
or virtuous, is an enterprise that calls for endurance. 
There are hard tasks to do and grim loads to lift. 

Hard work is the very will and program of God. But 
He has not planned that we should do it without Him. 
Nor is it His will that we should tamely take our tasks 
from Satan's hand and let him crush us with a vast moun- 
tain of worries, despairings, unbelieving griefs, dissipa- 
tions, and indulgences, that must be paid back with hard 
high interest. Oh, the crushing, grating, maddening bur- 
dens thus placed on the backs of human kind ! 

Hast thou a burden? If it be a necessary one or a 
needless one, do thou in either case heed the words of the 
Saviour. 

In the first place, come to Him. 

He invites you. Doubtless much that you bear is the 
needful labor of life; but let Him keenly inspect your 
burden. He will revise it if He does not remove it. 
Fall at His feet. Come to Him now. Place your burdens 
there. If you have been welded to them until you know 
not how to lower or loosen them, He will ease them down. 

"But mine are sins," you may say. Well, all the 
more urgently then do I ring out this text, " Come unto 
Me and I will rest you." Oh, the bone-breaking weight 
of sin ! Take the release of a free forgiveness from the 
Lord of the Highway. 

" They that are whole have no need of a physician, but 
they that are sick." 



The Balance and the Burden 45 

Come then to Christ, burdened and beloved. Let Him 
ease you and rest you. 

Behold yonder Man who calls to you to halt and refresh 
yourself at His feet. Yes, sit at the Saviour's feet, your 
burdens all unbound and your life relaxed in glad sur- 
render to Him. 

And then let Him send you forth. 

For life must be lived and its responsibilities must not 
be evaded, cannot in fact be so. And if you will let Him 
send you forth, He will fit you with the gracious yoke of 
His loving help. He will counsel you about your burdens 
and their adjustment with the clear wisdom of One who 
Himself knows the whole Lore of Life, the whole Wis- 
dom of Labor and Suffering. 

And as you travel the path that He directs, you will 
find that you always reach a resting-stone just when your 
spirit becomes jaded. A Hindoo woman who had become 
a Christian, was fond of calling her Saviour her Resting- 
Stone. She would say, " Christ is my Resting-Stone." 
Never shall there come a day but that there shall be in 
that hot day of dust and difficulty a breathing time of 
refreshing and invigoration. Ye shall find rest unto your 
soul. 

Take, then, Christ's Yoke. 

Take Christ's Instruction. 

Take Christ's Road, with all its careful and loving 
provision of adequate resting-places, of blessed intermis- 
sions, for the soul. 

And with Christ's yoke and Christ's rest-lined road and 
Christ's wisdom and counseling companionship, there goes 
the added grace of a lightened load. 



46 The Undying Torch 

You are no longer carrying sins. 

You are no longer carrying worries and envyings and 
selfish, hard ambitions, and worldly pride and pomp, and 
brazen greed and iron Iiate. 

How light your burdens now ! They are but the neces- 
sary weights of life. To others ofttimes depressing and 
heavy, but not so to you, for your yoke is easy and you 
are continually finding rest unto your soul! 

And, perhaps the very best of all, you have found the 
rest of rhythm, that rest that no skulker or shirker can 
know — the rhythm of the burden-bearer. For a yoke is 
in a manner a lifting machine. Its swinging burdens be- 
come rhythmic as the pace settles and steadies. A regi- 
ment of soldiers if in heavy marching order will often 
catch this music. The singing sailors, raising anchor as 
they chant about the capstan, feel it. It is unknown to 
those who do not bear burdens. 

I pray you may come to Christ and let Him rest you. 

I pray you may accept His helpful yoke of loving assis- 
tance. 

I pray you may have the daily counsel of the One Who 
has borne the world's Sin and Sorrow. 

I pray you may be finding gracious resting-stones along 
the trail of life. 

I pray you may be daily stirred by the music of swing- 
ing, forward-moving burdens, robbed of all their terror 
by the easy yoke and the lightened weight and the fre- 
quent refreshment. 






IV 



" Those ministers, if such there be, who do not believe 
in these swift crises in man's intellectual and spiritual life, 
are those who are still victims of the false view of time, 
and who have not yet realized with what freight of sig- 
nificance these flying minutes may be laden. The surgeon 
may make careful preparations, but how deft and swift is 
the critical work when the cataract has at last to be removed 
from the eye. The miracle of spiritual sightgiving is 
swifter still. The flash of a thought — who can estimate 
the length of time of its origin? The outreach of the 
soul in faith toward its Saviour — by what principles can 
you judge if it be swift or slow? All that we know is that 
God can do His most amazing work on human souls with 
a rapidity that even to think of dazzles us. 

" No transition of thought will ever destroy the inherent 
truth and beauty of the memorable sentence in Hawthorne's 

* Blithedale Romance/ describing the suicide of Zenobia. 

* The fleeting moment after Zenobia sank into the dark pool, 
when her breath was gone and her soul at her lips, was as 
long, in its capacity of God's infinite forgiveness, as the 
lifetime of the world.' " 

— C. Silvester Home. 



GJffe OtyrtHt Wt WatB^xp 



" The Word was God."— John 1 : 1. 

" My Lord and my God."— John 20 : 28. 



K3 



ONTEMPORARY literature often uses the 
term The Modern World. 

What do we mean by the modern world? 
We mean the present as differing from the 
past. Assuming that the place of Christ in 
the thought of other ages is known, the question arises, 
What is His place in the thinking of today? To answer 
this query we must remember that times change but 
human nature does not. The present era is happily dif- 
ferent from past epochs, but this is not due to any change 
in the nature of man but rather to the slow accretions of 
right thinking through many centuries. We reap what 
has been patiently sown and we sow what others shall 
reap. The modern world is only the latest layer of the 
coral, the latest deposit on the rocks of time, the latest 
step up toward a never attained summit. 

Hence the Christ to be related to the present must 
of necessity be related to the past. He must be interpreted 
as related to the unchanging foundation of things as well 
as to the last stones laid on the superstructure. It takes 
a timeless Christ to fit into this modern age, for all the 
factors of this present day are constant, unchanging fac- 
tors. The advantages of this age, its excellencies, are 
but the fruitage of seedings from the days of Eden to 

49 



50 The Undying Torch 

the days of the League of Nations. The question is not 
" Is Christ modern enough for this age? " but rather, " Is 
Christ changeless enough to affect this age?" 

The noblest fruitage of our time — the spread of evan- 
gelical free churches, the victories of civil and religious 
liberty, the growing spirit of humanity — all have their 
roots in the Apostolic age, that period when for the 
first time in history free churches appeared and within 
them grew human compassion, brotherhood, and democ- 
racy as well as correct conceptions of the relations of the 
soul to God. 

Our text — a double one — epitomizes the entire Fourth 
Gospel. Like an attorney for the state, the writer bravely 
declared what he shall later prove, " The Word was 
God! " Then he descends into the general movement and 
the minutiae of his deathless argument and comes back 
to his starting-point, bringing the doubter, Thomas, with 
him declaring through his belated lips, " My Lord and 
my God!" 

It is of profound significance that the great mass of 
modern evangelical Christians are Trinitarians. They 
worship Jesus Christ. He is their sovereign God. " The 
Word was God." They believe not only in the Lordship 
of Christ, but with Thomas they cry, " My Lord and my 
God ! " They do not give hospitality to mental reserva- 
tions concerning Christ's deity. They hold that they 
would be false to the best that their minds and hearts 
teach them, false to the sacred Scriptures, false to the 
testimony of the centuries, and false to human experience 
in the spiritual laboratory of prayer if they did not 
worship the Lord Jesus Christ. To the Jew Christ may 



The Christ We Worship 51 

be an enthusiast; to the Unitarian He may be a moral 
example; to the Catholic He may be a remote God, to 
be approached only through the mediation of Mary and 
the saints; but to the evangelical Christian He is the 
Creator-Redeemer, to whom the soul of man moves in- 
evitably and directly, and before Whom it rightly bows 
in humble adoration and solemn worship. Gladly does 
the modern Christian assent to the words of Lyman Ab- 
bott when he cries, " I have no thought of God that 
goes beyond Jesus of Nazareth." These Christians claim 
that no sin compares with the rejection of Christ as God 
and Saviour. Their message to the world is, " Turn 
from sin and self-sufficiency and fall at the sovereign 
Saviour's feet." They feel that he is blind indeed who 
has not seen the glory of Christ's deity. With very great 
reverence and godly fear and with unutterable tenderness, 
they recognize and acclaim the eternal fact of the Triune 
God, and call upon rebellious men to join with angels 
and with saints and with the innumerable witnesses of the 
vast creation in unitedly adoring the Christ of God. If 
their hymn-book were reduced to a single selection, that 
selection would be : 

All hail the power of Jesus' Name! 
Let angels prostrate fall; 
Bring forth the royal diadem 
And crown Him Lord of all. 

Let every kindred, every tribe, 
On this terrestrial ball, 
To Him all majesty ascribe 
And crown Him Lord of all. 

The twelve apostles were the first Christians. In sub- 
stance and essence their teaching is our teaching. We 



52 The Undying Torch 

stand willing to correct our doctrines and amend our 
conduct by their standards. If they were living on earth 
today we would hasten to join ourselves to them in fel- 
lowship and cooperation. They taught unequivocally the 
deity of Christ. In particular they taught His preexis- 
tence. His life, they declared, did not begin at Bethlehem ; 
the Son of Mary was also the Eternal Son of the Father. 
Language was exhausted to describe His prerogatives. 
He was " before times eternal!' He was " in the form of 
God, yet considered not His being on an equality with God 
a thing to be retained, ,, but for our sakes descended to 
the Cross. " In the beginning was the Word." " The 
Word was God." " The Word became flesh and dwelt 
among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the 
only Begotten of the Father." " That which was from 
the beginning our hands handled, and we declare unto 
you." " Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the 
foundation of the earth." " A Lamb slain before the 
foundation of the world." " Jesus Christ, the same 
yesterday, today, yea, and forever! " 

The significance of these statements is far greater 
than we are apt to think. We have been Trinitarians so 
long that we forget these utterances fell from the lips of 
men who had been the most intense of Unitarians. When 
pious Israelites, born and matured in the most radical 
of monotheistic schools, teach the preexistence and 
eternal nature of an earthly human associate, their words 
should not only have the weight but the value of gold. 

Why did the apostles teach the preexistence of Christ? 
The facts compelled them to. There was the fragrance 
of another world about Jesus Christ. They lived with 



The Christ We Worship 53 

Him for three years, and they rightly concluded that such 
living and thinking evidently had their source in another 
world, differently conditioned and conducted from this 
world, a realm whose values and standards were wholly 
unlike their own. He impressed them equally as a 
Brother and as a Foreigner. His whole life persisted in 
running counter to the grain of the world to which they 
were accustomed. His deeds had the motives of heaven. 
His speech had the accent of heaven. He utterly refused 
to accept the stamp of the commercial, social, ecclesi- 
astical, or scholastic world of the time. He manifestly 
brought with Him His credentials from a ranking heav- 
enly jurisdiction. 

The profound allusions of the Son of God deeply im- 
pressed them. Sometimes casually, sometimes with 
solemn emphasis, He dropped sentences that amazed and 
staggered them: "I came from the Father; I go to the 
Father/' " The glory I had with the Father before the 
world was." " In heaven they neither marry nor are 
given in marriage, but are as the angels of God." " I am 
the bread that cometh down from heaven." " Before 
Abraham was, J am" 

These and numerous other utterances spoken with the 
vast miracle of His life to enforce them, broke down 
their preconceived ideas of Him, pushed out the partitions 
of their minds, and led them on to final convictions. They 
discovered that He who lived as though under the rules 
of heaven and not of earth, could speak intimately of 
that condition and realm from whence He came. 

The apostles did not fail, either, to note with more 
than fascinated interest the recognition accorded Him by 



54 The Undying Torch 

angels and evil spirits. In these they believed. But they 
were not prepared to see them so subservient to Christ. 
As the followers of the Nazarene went on from experi- 
ence to experience, the angelic evidence accumulated. 
There were angels to herald Him. At His cradle the sky 
glowed with them. At His temptation they ministered 
unto Him. They attended Him as the birds of the field 
were wont to flutter about the head of the holy Saint 
Francis. They were at His tomb and at His ascension. 
Twelve legions of them stood, full-panoplied and ready, 
in the shadows of the Garden of Gethsemane. And there 
was not only the bright testimony of the angels ; there 
was the dark endorsement of frightened evil spirits. 
These knew Him. There was recognition. They had seen 
Him before Mary saw her Babe at Bethlehem. " What 
have we to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of the Most 
High God ? We know Thee, Who Thou art, Thou Holy 
One. Hast Thou come to torment us before the time ? " 
Thus beings bright and fair and spirits dark and sinister 
alike acknowledged their Master in realms other than 
human and earthly, and the amazed disciples pondered, 
and went steadily on toward the ultimate truth of His 
person. 

But more weighty than these considerations in the 
minds of the apostles was the fact of His deathlessness. 
To their astonishment, He did not die. His body died, 
but He survived it and revived it, transformed it and 
appeared in it openly and repeatedly for forty days be- 
fore finally leaving His Church, in the ascension. It was 
easy to discover the preexistence of Christ by the illumina- 
tion of His pre-ascension life. Standing in the glow of 



The Christ We Worship 55 

the resurrection, they saw with startling clearness the 
eternal nature of their Master. 

Long prior to the resurrection they had accumulated 
part of the materials from which the Christian doctrine 
of the Deity of the Christ was to be erected. It was 
material having to do largely with the astounding moral 
miracle of His sinlessness, as well as with the consider- 
ations already advanced as operative in their minds. As 
we, even in our day, read such an interpretation of the 
person of the Nazarene as Bushnell gives in his " Char- 
acter of Jesus," or such an argument from the human 
Nazarene to the Divine Logos as Carnegie Simpson fol- 
lows in " The Fact of Christ," or the conscientious an- 
alysis of the qualities of the Son of Man that Speer 
attempts in " The Man Christ Jesus," we find ourselves 
partially able to get the effect that the Life of lives thus 
had upon the apostolic mind. But the apostolic mind 
owed no slight acceleration to the frequent glimpses that, 
even before Pentecost, His followers had obtained of His 
omniscience, His omnipotence, and His omnipresence. 
The resurrection and the early days of the apostolic 
history completed the evidence and thus gave final form 
to their definition of Christ. 

They found Him possessed of more th<xn human wis- 
dom. Not alone the high and unique order of wisdom 
exemplified in the Sermon on the Mount, but the dramatic 
foretelling of events as, for instance, His own violent 
death, its manner, His resurrection, the destruction of 
Jerusalem and the victory of His Word. The full evi- 
dence of the omniscience of Christ could not be known to 
them nor even the full value of the evidence they them- 



56 The Undying Torch 

selves presented. It has, for instance, taken long centuries 
to appreciate the true altitude of the Sermon on the Mount. 
As we travel away from it in time, it rises higher and 
increasingly dominates the moral and intellectual land- 
scape. The apostles were hidden in the foothills of 
this mighty peak, too near perhaps to realize the intel- 
lectual grandeur of His utterances or to appreciate the 
vast perspectives of His far-seeing mind. They were 
perfect reporters. But; it has taken the ages to interpret 
and assay adequately His wisdom, and that work is not 
yet fittingly accomplished. But they unhesitatingly found 
Him to be All- Wise. He was to them omniscient. 

Of all men then living on the earth they attained per- 
haps to the greatest depth of soul. Under the shadow 
of the Cross they tested Him with their yearning, eager 
questions, and even when the shadows were darkest, and 
the light of the resurrection had not been vouchsafed to 
them, they clustered about Him in the upper room and 
passionately declared : " Now know we that thou knowest 
all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee; 
by this we believe that thou earnest forth from God." 
There was no need of asking Him more soul-questions. 
He had answered them all. They had found their point 
of rest in the wisdom of Christ. 

He was found also to be omnipotent. It was their 
high privilege to turn page after page in the book of His 
strength. They assisted Him at His clinics where He 
reversed the processes of disintegration and decay and 
shortened the long, patient healing processes of nature 
into the flash of a single second. He drove before Him 
the fevers, cancers, and leprosies of men. He called men 



The Christ We Worship 57 

back from the portals of Hades. He reached the long 
arm of His healing across the nineteen miles of space 
from Cana to Capernaum. He suspended the law of 
gravitation and made the unstable waters His sufficient 
pavement. He breathed upon " a great storm " and 
smoothed it into " a great calm." He who had not a 
place to lay His head accepted the obligation of five thou- 
sand guests in a desert place and sent them away well 
satisfied. He transmitted His healing powers to others. 
He made health contagious. Nature was made for Him 
and made way before Him. The very universe seemed 
to salute Him. Death threw its shadow over Him and 
paid the penalty of its affront by losing forever, from 
that time forth, its power to throw a shadow into any 
soul that trusted in Him. 

They also discovered Him to be omnipresent. This 
must have been to them a supreme discovery. It is 
true that He had said, " Lo, I am with you alway." It is 
also true that He had said, " Where two or three are 
gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst." 
But they may have taken these words figuratively. They 
were soon, however, to experience their blessedly literal 
fulfilment. Hardly had the Church begun its work, than 
the good news began to come in that Christ was every- 
where! The apostles and disciples were compelled to 
compare experiences. On the very day that Christ 
showed Himself near Damascus to Paul, it was 
found that He could show himself to the Twelve in 
Jerusalem and to Philip in Samaria. It is difficult for us 
to imagine the splendor of that great revelation — the tri- 
umphant truth that the Risen Christ was with every one 



58 The Undying Torct 

■ im in mm i i ■ i h i i h i i 'iT 

of His disciples everywhere they might go in His name. 
When this was realized the Church became irresistible. 
It is true that imprisonment and death threatened them 
in every place, but Christ also waited to welcome them 
in every city and town. No committee met without Him, 
no church worshiped without His presence, no apostle 
wended his way through a desert place unaccompanied by 
His Lord, and no lone martyr endured the final bite of 
the Empire's jealous hate without the mysterious recom- 
pense of a Saviour's dying grace. His multiplied leader- 
ship was in the very air. 

Lo, on the darkness brake a wandering ray, 

A vision flashed along the Appian Way, 

Divinely in the pagan night it shone, 

A mournful Face, a Figure hurrying on. 

" Lord, whither f arest ? " Peter wondering cried ; 

"To Rome," said Christ, "to be recrucified." 

Into the night the vision ebbed like breath, 

And Peter turned, and rushed on Rome and death! 

He was in Jerusalem, but also in Antioch. He was in 
Ephesus, but also in Rome. He was in Alexandria, but 
also in Illyria. Jesus Christ was discovered to be omni- 
present. 

It was, then, experiences such as these that gave to 
the world its first Christians, men committed profoundly 
to the only possible interpretation of His being ; namely, 
that He was the Incarnate God Himself. 

In the cathedral at Copenhagen stands the benignant 
figure of Thorwaldsen's Christ. It has become a Mecca 
for the lovers of beauty and the devout in heart. A 
traveler came from afar to see the famed production. 
He looked long and critically, standing first near and 



The Christ We Worship 59 

then at a distance ; then to the right and again to the left. 
He finally turned away disappointed. But a little child 
standing beside him and eagerly watching his face said: 
" O, sir, you cannot see Him that way. You must go 
very close and fall on your knees and look up! " 

It was this that the manifest deity of Christ had led 
the apostles to do, and in the doing of it that Deity was 
still further unveiled and unfolded to their ardent gaze. 
Their loyalty to His teaching followed as a matter of 
course. They would have permitted themselves to be 
torn limb from limb rather than change His orders or His 
ordinances. Their vivid conviction as to His deity pho- 
tographed like a flash of lightning upon their sensitized 
hearts an indescribably strong devotion to His person. 
Who would have dared suggest to them the whittling and 
belittling conceptions of Christ contained in much mod- 
ern liberalism? They cut their way sharply through the 
false religions and confusing philosophies and corrupt 
culture of their day. No system, however pretentious or 
subtle or insinuating, could daunt or defeat or swerve 
these first believers, for they had stood on the holy mount 
with Christ. He alone could save. He alone could or- 
ganize His Church. He alone would be permitted to pre- 
sent to it its doctrines. And He alone would be recog- 
nized in the executing or the changing of its ordinances. 
They worshiped Him. And their spiritual children still 
worship Him! Vast hosts of Christians, marvelously blest 
of God despite all their unworthiness, increasingly pro- 
claim the Triune God, still press His claims upon the 
souls of men, still declare the infinite compassion of His 
redemption through sacrificial blood, and still baptize 



60 The Undying Torch 

those who in penitence turn to a living, reigning Christ, 
into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost. 

Yet the modern Christian does not believe in the deity 
of Christ alone because Paul and John did so. Christ is 
revealing Himself directly to His modern disciples. We 
cry with the delighted Samaritans, " Now we believe, not 
because of Thy speaking, for we have heard for ourselves 
and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of 
the world." Men are constantly meeting the Divine 
Christ. Slow-witted Moody met Him, and became a field- 
marshal of the kingdom of God. Desperate John Woolley 
met Him, and turned from thoughts of suicide to a noble 
achievement in service to humanity. Gordon, of Boston, 
met Him in the quiet of his library, and the Clarendon 
Street Church became famous the world around. And 
what shall we say of Florence Nightingale and Thomas 
Chalmers, and William Booth, and Hudson Taylor, and 
Charles Spurgeon, and John G. Paton, and George Muel- 
ler, and Andrew Murray, and Jerry McAuley, and 
Henry Drummond, and Frances Willard, and Alexander 
Duff, and Henry Mabie, and Chaplain McCabe, and John 
A. Broadus, and Harry Munroe, and Pandita Ramabai, 
and John E. Clough, and David Livingstone and Joseph 
Neesima? Did they not march under Immanuel's ban- 
ner? Did they not gladly bow the knee to the supernal 
Son of God? Did they not know Him in Whom they 
had believed? Were they the sons of doubt' or the sons 
of faith? Shall we substitute for their kind of leadership 
the endless interrogations of the German rationalists? 
Shall we shrink our thoughts of the Christ to fit the lati- 



The Christ We Worship 61 

tudinarianism of a passing phase of thought? Or shall 
we expand them in a worthy attempt to make room within 
our minds and hearts for the transcendent facts that have 
to do with a proper faith in God the Son of God? 

These are not the days to believe less. Time does not 
dilute, it enriches the stalwart creed of the Christian. 
Every century since Calvary has added to the certainty 
of the Christian hope. Time seems not to dim, but to 
unveil the splendors of the Son of God. The voice of an 
ever-increasing host of witnesses ushers in each new 
epoch of history, and the invention of each new heresy is 
outfaced and discounted and thwarted by the geometrical 
progression of the powers of the Christ as released in 
His people. " The great thing about Christianity," Joseph 
Fort Newton reminds us, " is that you never can tell what 
it will do next ! " Yes, in the words of the golden-tongued 
Spurgeon, " The Bible has passed through the furnace 
of persecutions, literary criticisms, philosophic doubt, and 
scientific discovery, and has lost nothing but those human 
interpretations which cling to it like alloy to precious 
metal." Thus in like manner and measure do the cen- 
turies witness to the deity of Christ. Time but clears 
the mists from the towering fact of the redemptive mani- 
festation of God in Christ Jesus. 

The Eternal Christ is with us. He is ours to worship 
and to serve. His bugles are pealing throughout the 
Church Militant. A great hour is upon us. Vast vic- 
tories are within our grasp. Christian, let us repudiate 
apostasy! Let us demand a leadership in our churches 
that is above suspicion! Let us inaugurate, by a holy 
loyalty to Christ our God, the noblest era of evangelism, 



62 The Undying Torch 

missions, justice, and righteousness in all recorded time 
since Calvary became a fact of history! Let us whole- 
heartedly seek our first love ! Let us exalt the Name and 
splendor and preeminence of our majestic Redeemer! 
Then we cannot fail of a stupendous triumph in the hearts 
of men. 

Lead on, O King Eternal; 

The day of march has come; 
Henceforth in fields of conquest 

Thy tents shall be our home; 
Through days of preparation 

Thy grace hath made us strong, 
And now, O King Eternal 

We lift our battle-song. 

Lead on, O King Eternal; 

We follow, not with fears; 
For gladness breaks like morning 

Where'er Thy face appears; 
Thy Cross is lifted o'er us, 

We journey in its light; 
The crown awaits the conquest, 

Lead on, O God of Might. 



Brnttb mb Gtertatn 



When we open the Bible we are in the presence of 
tremendous things. One of them is the statement that a 
man may know here in this life positively that he has the gift 
of eternal life. Some men corroborate this teaching by a 
dynamic experience. 

Mel Trotter exclaims : " How do I know I am saved ? 
Why, I was there when it happened ! " 

Others have a quieter experience. When ships cross 
the equator, there is no jar of the boat, but south of the 
equator the climate and skies change. The Southern Cross 
becomes dominant in the heavens. Many of us know that 
"we have passed from death unto life" because the Cross 
has become dominant with us, and our heart-climate has 
become mellowed by the new zephyrs of love to God and 
love to men. We know we have passed from death unto 
life because we love. 




g>uwb mb Certain 

" These things have I written unto you, that ye may know 
that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the 
name of the Son of God."— 1 John 5 : 13. 

*H1 S eagerly as Sir Galahad ever searched for 
the Holy Grail, a much beloved friend of 
mine searched for the answer to this ques- 
tion, " How may I know beyond the shadow 
of a doubt that I am a saved man? " I am 
convinced that my friend was a Christian when he began 
his search, but he was filled with harassing doubt as to 
his standing with God. Thirsting for Christian certainty 
— the certainty of his own salvation — he listened to many 
ministers and attended many services, and all in vain. 

Seven years passed away. Finally, while on a business 
trip to the Pacific Coast, my friend entered a little church 
in the city of Stockton. He there heard a message 
on Christian Assurance, and with great joy he accepted 
that message for his own heart. He became certain of 
his own redemption and positive of his own acceptance 
with God. 

I afterward traveled with him in many towns and 
cities, and I noticed with what eagerness he sought to 
impart to others his own blessing. He was one of the 
most gracious and gentlemanly of Christians, and by na- 
ture modest and unassuming, but he lost no opportunity 
to talk to men both in and out of the church. His invari- 
able question would be, " Sir, do you know that you are 

65 



66 The Undying Torch 

a saved man?" He would then tell of his own weary 
search for certainty, and would urge the one to whom he 
was speaking to fulfil the conditions and join the ranks 
of those who knew that they were forgiven of sin, ac- 
cepted of God, and possessed the gift of eternal life. 

Joyous service is born of the certainty of salvation! 

The Church of today needs to be swept through and 
through with a wave of glad testimony to the fact of a 
present-tense salvation. 

The modern Christian needs to discover anew the 
meaning of the Master's statement, " He that believeth 
on the Son hath everlasting life." 

And in the recovery of that glad certitude there is no 
utterance of the apostolic mind which will help us more 
than the words of John the Beloved, " These things have 
I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal 
life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of 
God." 

I 

First of all, note with me in that utterance, The 
Grace of Christian Certitude — " Ye may know that ye 
have eternal life." 

The apostle John never descended to valueless themes. 
He was soon to pass from the earth into the glory. He 
consecrated his final energy of mind and heart to writing 
an epistle on the Certainty of Salvation. And what the 
aged John said was but the climax of an ever-increasing 
emphasis through the entire Bible. 

The doctrine of assurance in the Old Testament is a 
doctrine of national assurance. Israel was in the Egyptian 



Saved and Certain 67 

bondage. Then said Jehovah : " I will take you to me for 
a people, and I will be to you a God ; and ye shall knozv 
that I am Jehovah your God " (Exod. 6:7). 

Later Israel hesitates at the swollen river Jordan with 
the Promised Land in sight. The living God, through 
the lips of His servant Joshua, orders the precious Ark 
into the stream. Twelve men accompany it. As the river 
dries before them, they take from the bed twelve stones. 
With these stones they erect a memorial for the tribes. 
Joshua said, " Hereby ye shall know that the living God is 
among you " (Josh. 3 : 10). This was national assur- 
ance. 

Every now and then, however, in the old days of Israel, 
there rings out the note of individual assurance. 

Take for instance Manasseh's experience after repen- 
tance : " Then Manasseh knew that Jehovah He was God " 
(2 Chron. 33 : 13). There is, too, the dramatic cry of 
Job: "I know that my Redeemer liveth" (Job 19 : 25). 
And the plea of the Psalmist : " Oh, continue Thy loving 
kindness unto them that know Thee" (Psa. 36 : 10). 

But the dominant note in the Old Testament is that 
Israel may be certain of salvation through Jehovah. 
There was to be a great national assurance, a triumphant 
certainty that Israel was the saved and accepted people 
of God. In the shadows of the Babylonian exile the 
nation is pointed back to God by Ezekiel, the Prophet of 
the Exile. Over forty times in the single book of Ezekiel 
there sounds the beat of the drums of assurance : " Ye 
shall know that I am the Lord your God." Israel shall be 
saved and Israel shall be certain. 

As we open the New Testament, the theme of certi- 



68 The Undying Torch 

tude has become more intimate. It relates to the cer- 
tainty of personal salvation. 

Very significant are the statements of our Lord Jesus 
Christ before the fact of His cross. Speaking to those 
whom He had called unto Himself, He says, " It is 
given unto you to know the mysteries " (Matt. 13 : 11). 
More explicitly still, He declares, " I know mine own and 
mine own know Me" (John 10 : 14). On the very 
evening of the atoning act He solemnly and impressively 
says, "Henceforth ye know the Father" (John 14 : 7). 
And on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane He en- 
shrines the doctrine of Christian certitude in His solemn, 
high-priestly prayer when He cries, " This is life eternal, 
that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him 
whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ " (John 17 : 3). 

Then came the Cross. Following its accomplished 
redemption, its finished work of reconciliation and of 
administered forgiveness, comes a chorus of assured 
salvation from the multiplied witnesses of the Church. 

The teaching of Assurance, after the fact of the Cross 
has been accomplished, may be epitomized in the exultant 
words of Peter, " His divine power hath granted us all 
things that pertain unto life and godliness." Or the ring- 
ing words of Paul, "I know Whom I have believed." 
Or the song of double certainty in the very context of 
our text : " Beloved, now are we children of God. It doth 
not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that we 
shall be like Him" (1 John 3:1-3). 

Just as the Old Testament culminates in the teaching 
of national assurance by repeating forty times in the 
prophecy of Ezekiel the phrase, " Ye shall know that I 



Saved and Certain 69 

am the Lord your God," so in the climacteric epistle of the 
New Testament, the First Epistle of John, there sounds 
through all the mists of the world's uncertainty and the 
fogs of our own misgivings, the gloriously insistent 
chimes of the certainty of individual salvation. 

You who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour 
and yet fear to claim your own inheritance of assurance, 
give heed to me while I sound out these great sentences 
of positive salvation. 

" We know that we know Him." 

" We know that we are in Him." 

" We know that we shall be like Him." 

" We know that we have passed from death unto life! 3 

" We know that we are of the truth." 

" We know that He abideth in us." 

" We know that we abide in Him." 

" We know the love that God hath in us." 

" We know that He heareth us." 

" We know that we are of God." 

" We know that the Son of God is come." 

There is a blessed stubbornness in the invincible swelling 
music of this great assurance. If we would have the 
secret of power in Christian living, then we must be able 
to join in the music of this chorus of assurance. " These 
things have I written that ye may knozv that ye have 
eternal life." 

II 

Now let us notice The Sphere of Christian Certi- 
tude — " You who believe on the name of the Son of 
God." 



70 The Undying Torch 

While there is a dominant theme in God's Word that 
men may know their God and their acceptance with Him, 
it is significant that no son of earth can rightly claim 
eternal life as his possession unless he has first had the 
experience covered in the apostle's qualifying words, 
" You who believe on the Name of the Son of God/' 

My hearers, do you wish to know why some of you 
have no sympathy with my theme and no share in its 
joy and comfort? You have not yet believed on the name 
of the Son of God! 

But John does not intend by these words to limit as- 
surance. His aim is to extend it. The thought in the 
mind of John is that there are many who believe on the 
name of the Son of God who need to know that they have 
been endued with eternal life, who need to know that they 
have already crossed over from a lost position to a saved 
condition and are saved forever from the wrath to come. 

Let us look at the phrase for a moment. There are 
three terms in it. First, " Son of God." This is the 
resurrection title of our Saviour. It was only when His 
disciples had gone all the way through to His resurrection 
with Him that they came to give Him this title. To be- 
lieve on the Son of God, then, means to believe that Jesus 
Christ died bearing your sins (as He claimed to do) and 
that His claim was forever proclaimed true by His resur- 
rection ! 

Then there is the word " Name." The name of a man, 
then as now, meant his very self. It did not mean merely 
that by which he was called. We say that a man " makes 
a name for himself." He does it by his life, his ability, 
his works. He does not assume a new description, but he 



Saved and Certain 71 

ref orges his inherited name. So the phrase, " the Name 
of the Son of God " signifies the life that He lived, the 
character that He displayed, the work that He accom- 
plished. It therefore enshrines His great accomplishment, 
to which his whole conduct, labor, and career were conse- 
crated; namely, the atonement for sin, the enactment of 
the Law of Salvation. To believe on His name is, there- 
fore, to believe on Him as the Redeemer of mankind, the 
One who prepared Himself for the Cross by the life 
He lived and thus, having no moral stain Himself, as- 
cended the cross taking upon Him the judgment due your 
own sins. 

The third term is, " Believe on " — " You who believe on 
the Name of the Son of God." These two words consti- 
tute a rich phrase. We cannot take time to exhaust their 
meaning, but for our purpose just now let us remember 
that to " believe on " carries the idea of resting upon, 
or depending upon. 

Now, in the light of these explanations, those of us 
" who believe on the name of the Son of God " are those 
who were concerned over their sins, who sought a place 
of forgiveness and acceptance with the God they had 
sinned against, and who now place their dependence for 
salvation absolutely, and without any other reservation 
or hope whatsoever, upon the redeeming blood of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

We declare that we were lost. We testify that we have 
turned to Christ. We declare that His death for us is our 
hope of salvation from the penalty of sin. We declare 
that His spiritual power is our hope of salvation from 
the constant attack of sin. We depend utterly upon the 



72 The Undying Torch 

Name that Christ made for Himself when He finished 
His work of redeeming mankind. 

There are only two possible religions in the world. We 
must either have a religion that depends upon its own 
moral accomplishment for our salvation such as Bud- 
dhism, Mohammedanism, Unitarianism, or Deism ; or we 
must have as our religion the only one on earth that dis- 
trusts its own highest endeavors and seeks its ground of 
certainty and safety in the perfect accomplishment of a 
perfect Redeemer. 

" Your religion and mine are very different," explained 
a woman to her friend. " You may express your religion 
in two letters — ' D-o.' Do this, or that, or the other, and 
you may be saved. My religion is expressed in four 
letters — ' D-o-n-e.' The work has been done, sin has been 
answered for, the question of sin and judgment is set- 
tled. Christ has cried, ' It is finished.' I depend upon 
His work on my behalf. I serve Him because / am saved, 
not because I am trying to earn my salvation. It is a 
gift to me, based upon the merit of Another. I own it. 
I am endeavoring in grateful service to work it out in 
all life's relationships." 

Ill 

And now let us observe The Ground of Christian 
Certitude — " These things have I written unto you that 
believe." 

A quaint commentator has remarked : " John does not 
say, ' These good feelings have I given unto you that be- 
lieve that ye may know ye have eternal life,' yet that is 
the way many readers read the verse." 



Saved and Certain 73 

There is a host of disciples anxious to assure them- 
selves of their standing with God by experiencing an 
emotional crisis. They are intently studying their own 
feelings. Should you ask why they are certain that they 
have the gift of eternal life, they would either reply, " I 
know it because I feel happy and exalted and at peace," 
or else, " Alas, I am afraid I am not saved, for / do not 
feel the joy, and peace and consciousness of God that I 
hear others speak of." 

These mistaken friends would be greatly helped if they 
would take a square look at our text. Then they would 
not fail to see that it is not their feelings, but something 
entirely outside of themselves, that is the ground of assur- 
ance of salvation. " These things have I written unto you 
that believe, that ye may know that ye have eternal life." 
It is the written Word of God that is the ground of cer- 
tainty, when once we have turned from sin to Christ. 

Some one has said : " What would you think of the 
captain of a ship who in time of storm commanded the 
crew to take the anchor down inside the ship, and anchor 
it on the inside? The only way to help a drifting ship is 
to throw the anchor overboard, and to anchor it to some- 
thing outside of itself." 

We must do likewise in the realm of Christian faith. 
When we are in doubt, and we feel our confidence slip- 
ping away, let us open the Word of God and see what has 
been written for our assurance. 

Now, when the apostle speaks of the things that he has 
written, he of course refers to the epistle of which this 
verse is a part. He uses the same phrase earlier in 
the same epistle. He says, " These things we write that 



74 The Undying Torch 

our joy may be made full." Here his object is to perfect 
the young converts and instruct them to his own heart's 
satisfaction. 

He also writes, " These things write I unto you that 
ye may not sin," his object here being to help over the 
hard place of discouragement the depressed souls of de- 
feated disciples. 

Again he writes, " These things have I written unto you 
concerning them that would lead you astray." Here his 
object is to protect the lambs of the flock from the wolves 
of Christ-minimizing and Christ-denying teachers. 

Finally, he writes, " These things have I written unto 
you that ye may know that ye have eternal life." Here 
his object is to make the saved man certain. He desires 
to equip all believers with the gladness of sureness. The 
aged apostle desires to pass on to the new generation, 
and to all generations of Christians, his own joyous assur- 
ance of eternal life. He desires all Christians to get to 
that position where they can say : " I was sick, but I am 
healed; I was lost, but I am on the road; I was unfor- 
given, but I am now forgiven; I was the plaything of 
sin, but now I am strengthened against sin; I was afraid 
of judgment, but now I have passed through judgment 
into a glorious acceptance, by my faith in Jesus Christ 
my Lord!" 

Now do not let us defeat this Spirit-inspired work of 
John the apostle. If the certainty of salvation is to be 
found not in our feelings, but in the written Word of 
God, just what does that written Word say to the one 
who has turned to Christ? 

It says, " We know we have passed out of death into 



Saved and Certain 75 

life because we love the brethren." This is the assurance 
of the new love toward Christ's people which comes into 
the hearts of all who are converted. 

The written Word also says, " Whosoever shall confess 
that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him and he 
in God." This is the certainty born of a brave allegiance 
to Christ amid the world's sneers and opposition. 

The written Word also says, " Whosoever believe th 
that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God." This is 
the certainty of salvation springing from the claims of 
Christ on our behalf. 

Now these three utterances of John are written by a 
man who is himself in Christ. If we reverse these three 
utterances we will see their logical order in the mind of 
the man who is approaching Christ. To the man who is 
approaching Christ we may condense these three utter- 
ances into three brief sentences. 

Whosoever believeth! 

Whosoever confesseth! 

Whosoever lovethl 

If what faith you have for your own salvation is in 
Jesus Christ, if that faith is the kind that has led you to 
confess His name, and if that faith is of the kind that has 
brought a new affection into your heart, not only toward 
Him, but toward those who like yourself have turned 
to Him, then you are SAVED! 

Believe it and rejoice in it. 

Observe how surpassingly simple it is, Whosoever be- 
lieveth; Whosoever confesseth; Whosoever lovethl 

But now let us go back to the first text that we used. 
We really do not need any other. There is no necessity 



76 The Undying Torch 

of our going beyond this single verse. " These things 
have I written unto you that ye may know that ye have 
eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the 
Son of God." 

Now let us rearrange the words of this verse to acquire 
force for our final thought. Let us put it this way — 
" You that believe on the name of the Son of God .... 
yon may know that you have eternal life" 

I have already commented on the phrase, " Believe on 
the name of the Son of God." Simply and in a sentence, 
it means that we have been penitent concerning sin and 
anxious to find forgiveness and eternal life, but we have 
abandoned all hope of getting these elsewhere and are 
now depending only upon the Son of God for these 
mercies. 

All such have eternal life! 

Perhaps you will say, " I believe that Jesus died for 
me, but there is a great mystery in this matter and I can- 
not fully understand it." 

Of course there is a mystery in this matter, but that 
does not need to make you uncertain. 

Remember these simple facts : First, Christ deliberately 
went to the Cross in the perfection of His stainless life; 
no man had power to put Him on that Cross ; He went 
there in your behalf. 

Second, He took upon Himself your disabilities. He 
needed no Cross for Himself, and with a word He could 
have shriveled the men who nailed Him there. Whatever 
He did on that Cross He did for you. He claimed that 
that death upon the Cross opened for you the way of 
forgiveness. 



Saved and Certain 77 

When you come to God in Christ's name, asking for 
forgiveness and the gift of eternal life, you need not 
understand the theory of Atonement. 

All you need to do is to say to your own heart : " What 
Christ did there was for me. It was a perfect work. It 
was designed to bring me forgiveness and acceptance with 
God. Christ represented me on the Cross and in His 
resurrection. / will not insult Him by my doubts. He 
did a perfect work and my forgiveness is a perfect for- 
giveness." 

Charles Spurgeon says, " I looked to Jesus, and the 
dove of peace sang in my heart, but when I looked at 
the dove of peace it flew away." 

Let us not look within, but without. Assurance comes 
to us when we contemplate the Cross, and remember what 
the written Word says about those who trust in the 
redemption of the Cross. 

Some years ago I was preaching at a Salvation Army 
meeting. A woman came forward at the conclusion of 
the sermon in great distress of mind. She with others 
knelt in prayer. No one seemed able to comfort her. At 
last the Salvation Army Captain knelt beside her and, 
standing near, I heard him say, " What were you weeping 
about?" 

She said, " My sins." 

He said, " Do you believe that Christ died for you ? " 

" Yes," she replied. 

" Did He bear your sins ? " 

" Yes," she answered again. 

" How many of your sins did He suffer for ? " 

She said, " All of them." 



78 The Undying Torch 

" Then, Madam," said the Captain earnestly, " how 
many have you left to weep about tonight? " 

Now, that is the whole of this great matter in a nutshell. 
Our faith may be a trembling faith, but it has been placed 
in Christ. Our confidence is in Him. Has He done a 
perfect work for us? Yes. Then let us rejoice in our 
salvation ! 

On one occasion I was traveling on the Michigan Cen- 
tral Railroad. A passenger came down the aisle and spoke 
to me, saying : 

" I have a friend on this train, a woman, who is in 
great distress of mind over her salvation. Will you talk 
with her?" 

Of course I assented, and my friend brought the woman 
to me. As the train rushed westward I talked with her 
about her spiritual life. After I had shown her the way 
of life, she said : 

" Oh, I have turned from sin as far as I know what 
sin is. I have believed in Christ as the only Saviour. 
But I do not feel any different. I am still depressed and 
uncertain and unhappy." 

Then, of course, I saw what was her trouble. She 
was looking inside, instead of outside. She was looking 
at her feelings instead of looking at the finished work of 
her Saviour. We arrived at our destination. I went 
over the matter with her again and again, sitting in the 
waiting-room of the station. When I was almost in 
despair I got her mind from herself to her Christ. Look- 
ing up through her tears, she said : 

" Why, I see it now. It is just trust." 

A smile broke out on her face. 



Saved and Certain 79 

" Yes," I said, " you have turned from sin and have 
come to Christ as best you know how. Now you trust 
the whole matter of your salvation to Him. You honor 
Him by your faith. You believe in His work on the 
Cross, and you believe in the record in His Word. It is 
all trust." 

When I was a new Christian, having just received 
Christ, I was very anxious to know that I was saved. 
I went to church Sunday morning. The congregation 
began to sing. They sang an old hymn, but I had never 
paid much attention to it before. " How firm a founda- 
tion, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith. ..." I 
listened eagerly. I desired to know intensely the ground 
of my certainty. The people went on singing. My heart 
leaped as I heard them : 

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, 
Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word. 

We are saved because of the work Christ accomplished 
for us. We are certain because His Word declares all 
who put their trust and confidence in the Christ are saved 
and have the gift of eternal life. " These things have I 
written unto you that ye may know that ye have eternal 
life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of 
God." 

During this same search for assurance on my part, I 
was handed a leaflet by the Secretary of the Young Men's 
Christian Association. It was entitled, " Safety, Cer- 
tainty, and Enjoyment." It was a great blessing to me. 
The leaflet raised three questions and then answered 
these three questions. They were : " How may I be 

G 



80 The Undying Torch 

saved? How may I be sure that I am saved? How may 
I enjoy the Christian life?" The answers to the three 
questions were as follows : 

" We are saved by what Christ has done for us. We 
are made certain of our salvation by the written Word of 
God. We enjoy the Christian life in proportion as we 
live lives of victory and fidelity" 

In other words, our safety depends upon what Christ 
has done. Our certainty depends upon what God has 
said. Our enjoyment depends upon how near we live to 
Christ in thought and word and deed. 

When the Christian trips and falls into sin a cloud 
comes over his sky. He has not lost his salvation, or he 
would not grieve so deeply because of his sin. The very 
fact of his grief is an evidence of his salvation. But he 
has lost his joy. He must hasten at once to Christ and ask 
that his sin be forgiven and his joy be renewed. 

Oh> Christian, look to Calvary and see what a perfect 
work Christ has done for you. Remember that God 
raised Him from the dead as a sign that, when God 
looked at that Cross where He hung as your Repre- 
sentative, He saw no flaw in Christ's work and no falsity 
in Christ's claims. 

What did Christ claim? He claimed to deal perfectly 
with your sin on that cross. 

Believe that He did so! 

Rest the whole matter of your salvation upon Him. 

That work avails for you. Believe it and rejoice in it. 

During a series of evangelistic services conducted by 
the evangelist Dwight L. Moody, in the city of Sheffield, 
England, many accepted Christ as Lord and Saviour. 



Saved and Certain 81 

After Mr. Moody had left the city to conduct services in 
Birmingham, these new Christians met together for 
mutual help and encouragement. To all who have newly 
accepted Christ and to all Christians who are seeking the 
assurance of salvation I commend the letter which Mr. 
Moody, unable to be present, sent them from Birming- 
ham. Let us read it together: 

Birmingham, Jan. 19, 1875. 
My dear Friends: 

Mr. Sankey and I would have been very glad to have seen 
you all once more tonight, but God has given us work in 
another corner of His vineyard, and we can only join you in well- 
wishes. I am very glad now to have this opportunity of ful- 
filling my promise to send you a short message. There are 
many things I should like to say if I had the time, but I must 
confine myself to one or two very plain words. Ever since we 
left Sheffield, every one of us will have changed a little. Some 
will be merrier, and some will be gloomier. Some will be 
fuller of God's love, and some may even feel a little emptier; 
others., again, may not have gotten over the period of wonder, and 
still find themselves asking: "And can it really all be true? 
Is it not just some strange dream? Is it really possible that 
God loves us, and that we are really saved for evermore? " And 
this is my only one reply to these very common and rational 
questions : We are changed, but Christ is not. Oh, if He were 
different, it would be a very, very serious thing. And if we are 
changed and are frightened about it, we must find out at once 
if He is changed too. If it is only we who are different, it does 
not matter much, because salvation does not depend upon us, but 
upon Him. And the Bible tells us all about it in one little golden 
sentence, which we must all ask God to burn into our hearts, 
and then we shall never be troubled any more about our feelings. 
In Hebrews 13 : 8 He says, " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, 
and today and forever.'' Yes ! the same ; no matter how changed 
we are, no matter how dull, how joyless. He is just as He was 
yesterday, just as He was the night when we got our first 
glimpse of His dying love for us. 



82 The Undying Torch 

Oh, dear friends, let us keep looking to Him, and as we 
look, God will give us the longing to be more like Him. Perhaps 
some of you already feel that longing, and you don't know what 
it is ! Perhaps you think it is very hard to have this craving after 
a better heart and a holier life. But Christ says it is "blessed." 
It is not hard; it' is not a misfortune; it is not a sign that the 
health of the soul is gone. No; appetite is not a symptom of 
disease, but of health. And the Master Himself has told us 
that it is blessed to be hungry and thirsty after Him. And some 
of you may be mourning over your empty hearts, for little love 
is there ; how little faith, how little zeal for the Master's service ! 
Well, it is not hardship to feel like that. Christ says it is 
" blessed " — blessed to be poor in spirit ; and the poorer, the 
weaker, the humbler we feel, the more room is there for Him to 
perfect strength in our weakness. " My grace is sufficient for 
thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness; .... for when 
I am weak, then am I strong." 

And now, dear friends, before closing, let me ask you all 
to do something for Christ, something this very week. I cannot 
tell you what to do; but God will if you ask Him. He has 
something for everybody to do ; and let us be earnest in doing our 
best for Him, and let us do it soon. Death will be upon us when 
our work will be but begun, and " the night cometh when no man 
can work." And for every one of you, that God may bless you, 
and keep you, and cause the light of His face to shine upon you, 
and enable you to grow in the knowledge and likeness of His only 
begotten Son, is the earnest and humble prayer of your affection- 
ate friend. 

D. L. Moody. 

Once more let me say that the need of the church 
today is for a wave of assurance. We can evangelize 
the world in this generation, and do it with comparative 
ease, if the Church flames with glad testimony to a salva- 
tion that has not the shadow of a doubt about it. 

Shadowless salvation! 

Looking to Christ ourselves, we become positive con- 
cerning our own redemption. And then we are moved 



Saved and Certain 83 

/<? f^nz £0 a lost world and point that world to a Christ 
Who has saved us and made us sure. 

Thanks be to God that men may be saved by simple 
trust in the Son of God! 

Thanks be to God that the saved man may know he is 
saved beyond the shadow of a doubt ! The Cross slays all 
uncertainty. Rejoice, trembling believers ! Lift up your 
hearts and claim the certainty of your salvation. 

Would you lose your load of sin? 

Fix your eyes upon Jesus; 
Would you know God's peace within? 

Fix your eyes upon Jesus ; 
Jesus Who on the Cross did die, 

Jesus Who lives and reigns on high, 
He alone doth justify; 

Fix your eyes upon Jesus ! 



VI 



General Sickles was terribly wounded on the second 
day of the three-day battle at Gettysburg. He was 
hurried by train to Washington while the battle was 
still on. He says: 

" I was taken to rooms on F Street where Mr. Lincoln 
called on me shortly after he learned of my arrival. I said 
to him: "Mr. President, what of the future? Will we 
eventually put down the rebellion and restore the Union?" 
" Well," he replied, " until recently I sometimes had serious 
doubts. A few days ago I felt I could not do more than 
I had done and success seemed as far away as at the be- 
ginning of the war. I went to my closet and on my knees 
I prayed to God for the success of our arms. I told Him 
from the depths of my soul how I had done all that human 
agency seemed capable of. I asked Him to grant a speedy 
and successful termination of the war. I prayed thus for 
hours and, General, the answer came. When I arose from 
my knees all doubt had fled. From that hour I have had 
no fear of the result. We have won at Gettysburg. We 
have not yet had word from Vicksburg, but, General, be 
prepared for good news when it comes. All is right at 
Vicksburg." The next day came the telegram from Grant 
announcing the capture of Vicksburg and its garrison of 
30,000 men. 




Bximtt tit If ?atr£tt 

" And there followed a silence in heaven about the space of 
half an hour."— Rev. 8 : 1. 

HE final book of the Scriptures is the Book 
of Unveiling. It has been and always will 
be a favorite portion of the Word. If you 
were to select your ten favorite chapters 
from the entire range of the Divine Revela- 
tion, at least one of these ten would be from the Apoca- 
lypse. Puzzled as we often are by its mysteries, we 
sometimes fail to remember its great mission of inspira- 
tion and comfort. It may take the red light of some 
future day of bitter persecution to illuminate fully its 
message to the Church, but meanwhile it is folly to neglect 
its pages. Let us read the Apocalypse not only for its 
prophetic truth, but for its spiritual suggestiveness. Its 
symbolism is at once its mystery and its strength. 

It would be perfectly legitimate for us to attempt to 
read the future judgments and mercies of God in this 
Book of the Unveiling of the Glorified and Coming Christ, 
but this will not be our method at this moment. I will 
ask you to look at a suggestive sentence of the Revelation 
and allow it to teach you a lesson much needed in this 
modern age : 

" And there followed a silence in heaven about the 
space of half an hour ! " 

The silence in heaven is recorded as following a great 

87 



88 The Undying Torch 

chorus of noises. Our earth is noisy. However digni- 
fied and deliberate the processes of Nature usually are, 
wherever man trails his way across the planet, there arises 
a commotion. Heaven is also represented as a place of 
prodigious energy. Even far-off Homer caught this truth 
and made his Vulcan the most striking and dramatic 
figure of Olympus — Vulcan, the nearest approach to a 
redeemer or mediator that the mind of Homer could 
fashion. Heaven is energetic. Angels fly from it to serve 
and administer. The most striking description of the 
Christian heaven is found in the phrase, " They shall 
serve Him day and night before the throne of God for- 
ever." The Christian's heaven is pictured as a city and 
not a countryside. It is a place of crowds, of music, of 
light, of vast radiating activities. It is a military head- 
quarters, a center of universal administrations, and it 
thrills with mighty purpose and holy plans. About the 
very throne of God are vivid lightnings, mighty voices, 
and pealing thunders. 

We rejoice that this is so. The highest ideal of life is 
not stagnation ; it is activity. Not a release from service, 
but a perfected strength to serve aright. The need of this 
hour in the history of the Christian Church is a mighty 
energy! We are nearing the goal of twenty centuries. 
If our hearts do not fail and our energies do not flag, 
we shall soon be able to hear messages from the four 
corners of the earth, proclaiming that the world is evangel- 
ized for the first time since Christ's ascension. We need, 
then, a vast activity of giving and praying and planning 
and sacrificing and serving — an energy not of the flesh 
but of the soul. 



Silence in Heaven 89 

God hath given us the lightning of His naked truth. 
Use, then, the flash of its uncompromising splendor to 
reveal and rout the accursed realities of sin. God hath 
given us voices — voices of inspired testimony, voices of 
pleading, of tender persuasion, of intercessory prayer. O 
Church of Christ, use the power of thy testimony and 
girdle the world with witnesses to Jesus' power ! God hath 
given us the thunders of His threatened judgments. 

Yes, the service of God demands a mighty energy! 
To the work ! To the work ! 

Remember the tireless itinerary of Whitfield. He 
carried the thread of his activity back and forth 
across the tiresome and treacherous Atlantic of his 
day so many times that he wove its two shores into 
a single fabric of evangelism. Emulate the energy 
of Henry Martyn in his consecration of mind and 
heart and time to the attacking of the most difficult 
mission field of history. Hear his cry, " Now let me 
burn out for God ! " Let the example of Moody arouse 
you to your highest and holiest efficiency. From the day 
of his conversion to the hour of death, his energies 
never slackened. He builded Sunday schools and 
churches and Christian associations and training-schools 
and colleges. He organized Conventions and Confer- 
ences. He substituted coffee clubs for saloons. He 
evangelized the great cities of the Anglo-Saxon world. 
On the last day of his public ministry he reached 24,000 
people with his burning message. He even arose from his 
death-bed, staggering across the room and saying, " It 
may be the will of God to raise me up and let me go on 
with His work." 



90 The Undying Torch 

Oh, that the Church of Jesus Christ would awaken to its 
resources and put them into the line of battle — resources 
of administration, of wisdom, of talent, of money, and of 
life. Great as the victories of the past have been, we may 
borrow a phrase from a famous sea-fighter and say, " We 
have not yet begun to fight ! " 

Yet the service of God demands not only a holy energy ; 
it demands a solemn pause. " There is no music in a 
rest, but there is the making of music in it." Unre- 
flecting, unceasing, routine energy is dangerous. Many 
a vigorous stream pours and roars down the mountain 
glen to the sea, carrying the fertile soil of the land out 
into the salty ocean. Such streams, with all their energy, 
only subtract rather than add to the blessing of mankind. 
Teach these streams to pause in pools of quietness or 
widen into rivers of serenity, and the countryside along 
their banks smiles in increased fertility. The Church of 
God needs not only an aroused but a regulated energy. 

Have you ever visited the noisy steel works at Home- 
stead? ,Do you remember the thunder of its hammers 
and the clamor of its machinery? And have you ever 
noticed that just before the steel is poured the noises 
cease, the men stand expectant, while the vast cup of 
metal slowly revolves? There is the pause before the 
pour. And following that pause there comes the outflow 
of glory, of lightnings, of innumerable stars, and later on 
the hammering of the mighty hammers upon the glowing 
ingots, and the shaping of the armor plate; the whole 
process pointed toward the possible thunders of an actual 
battle. But first must come the moment of pause and 
expectancy. 



Silence in Heaven 91 

Strike, if you will, all the mighty notes of the keyboard, 
but observe the pause. To Nature, God cries, " Rest ! " 
To history, God cries, " Rest! ,: He sends His own peo- 
ple into captivity because they will not give the very 
land a rest. He places the sharp period of the Sabbath 
after each week of toil, and every calendar of the civilized 
world is divided by God's ordained pause. He sweeps 
the shadows of the night over our eyes and demands that 
between every two days of energy there shall come a 
pause of preparation. 

So in His dealings with the Christian, He gives divine 
place and meaning to the time of silence. He exacts it 
of us. He is in the silence. In each accepted silence He 
prepares the soul for triumph. You will observe that 
there was a movement of seven angels and a giving out 
of seven trumpets even during the half-hour of silence 
on the timeless dial of heaven. While we are silent be- 
fore Him, God moves in our behalf. 

There is the pause of physical suffering. How dreadful 
the pangs of the body ! Ofttimes they compel a halt. The 
whole life pauses. Its boundaries seem to contract. Its 
glories seem to fall away. The soul itself seems to be 
diminished. Faith is tempted to conceive of God as far 
off. But however our sickness comes, we are to use it 
for the soul's advance. Beyond the heavenly pause came 
the record of a mighty triumph. Obtain then in your 
hour of suffering a triumph of endurance, a triumph of 
contentment. " I have learned .... to be content." Sick- 
ness is a black mine, but it takes us to a precious vein 
of heavenly metal. That metal is contentment. To some 
faces pain brings the wrinkles of restlessness and the 



92 The Undying Torch 

lines of bitterness. On other faces pain and suffering 
seem to leave only the attraction of a great contentment. 
Of all the fugitive verses of the American Civil War, 
there is none more pathetic and at the same time inspiring 
than the penciled lines found beneath the pillow of a dying 
soldier in the Military Hospital at Charleston. His very 
name has perished, but in his last hours his dimming eyes 
discovered a new meaning in the flag that he had pas- 
sionately served. 

I am not eager — bold; 

All that is past, 

I give a patient God my patient heart 

At last, 



And grasp His banner still, 
Though every star be dim, 
For stripes, no less than stars, 
Lead up to Him! 



There is the pause of disappointment and defeat. 
Sometimes the plans of life are overthrown. The energies 
are misdirected and end in the baffling of our best wisdom. 
Or, more bitter still, the soul is sullied with sin and the 
spiritual life confused and chaotic. God has no ministry 
for sin, but He can use the mournful pause of moral de- 
feat. By His grace, there can be the triumph of humility, 
the deep acceptance by the soul of a garment of unaffected 
humbleness of mind — an attitude of the soul that will in 
the end carry it on to victory. Pride is the root of every 
sin and humility the beginning of every virtue. 

There is the pause of meditation. It is noble to be con- 
tent in suffering. It is blessed to find the pearl of humility 
in the mire of defeat. It is a higher experience to bring 



Silence in Heaven 93 

deliberately the faculties of the soul to concentrate on the 
things of God, and wait before Him until the soft light of 
his illumination pervades and interprets the mysteries of 
life. How valuable the halt in the life of the Christian 
thinker — the hour of meditation in the midst of service. 
Remember, not the hour of mental brooding, but real and 
thoughtful meditation, the hour in which we select some 
truth of experience or Providence or some passage from 
the Word of God, and take our time to think our way into 
the middle of it. Such pauses in life lead us to the 
triumph of spiritual discernment. 

There is the pause of consecration. This is the hour 
when the soul stops to renew itself. Self-control was the 
noblest thought of the ethical teachers of old, Epictetus 
and Marcus Aurelius. Christ's control is the treasure that 
the Christian mind seeks. It was well that Christmas 
Evans paused on the Welsh hillside, bent his knee, and 
reviewed the barren orthodox activities and controversial 
bitterness of his ministry. The whole principality soon 
realized that there was a new man in their midst — a man 
Christ-controlled. 

The Church of God needs to remind itself of the imper- 
ative command of the Master to the apostles after His 
resurrection, " Tarry ye in Jerusalem until ye be clothed 
with power from on High. ,, Our Lord has in mind, as 
He speaks, the ascension of Elijah into heaven in the 
storm of fire. As the prophet ascended, he dropped his 
mantle upon the stedfast, enraptured Elisha. The young 
man cast away his own garment, clothed himself in the 
desert robe of his spiritual leader, and went back vic- 
toriously across the Jordan, to heal the salty well of 



94 The Undying Torch 

Jericho. Christ would have His people pause in conse- 
cration before hurrying into service. It is only by so do- 
ing that they will obtain the discernment and decision of 
soul that lead to the casting away of the garment of self- 
confidence. It is only in the act of consecration that they 
will even discern the Pentecostal mantle of their Lord or 
venture to clothe themselves with its power and authority. 

There is the pause of praise. This is the halt on the 
pilgrimage of life where we cease our activities to rejoice 
over our mercies. Did you pause in praise after that 
hospital experience? Did you halt to praise the faithful 
Christ after that narrow escape from moral disaster? 
Did you pause after that bit of prosperity? Did you 
pause after that special usefulness in the Kingdom? Did 
you pause after that consciousness of Christ's forgiveness 
and praise ? 

It is when we punctuate the life with frequent pauses 
of praise and thanksgiving that we come to the triumph of 
joy. Joy and praise are not identical, but the habit of 
gratitude and thankfulness to God leads the soul at last 
to live on the high plateau of a constant joyousness. If 
I were to advise you, I would say : " Begin and end every 
prayer with praise. Begin and end every day with 
praise. Approach and complete every crisis in life with 
praise." 

Nor would I forget the pause of penitence. There is a 
silence of contrition. It is the halt of the soul on the way 
to hell — the voices of rebellion all stilled and the mouth 
stopped before God. Oh, the solemnity of such an hour ! 

Sinner, hast thou come to such a time ? Here and now 
dpst thou feel the silence of a great contrition come over 



Silence in Heaven 95 

thee? Thou hast spoken carelessly of righteousness, of 
duty, and of God. Christ hath often heard thee boast thy- 
self of transgression, and perhaps the angels shuddered to 
hear from thy lips infidelities and blasphemies. But art 
thou now silent? Does a rejected Christ move thee? Is 
there a tear in thine eye? If so, how hopeful is thine 
estate! In the silence of thy soul's penitence methinks I 
see the glad faces of seven angels. They are about to 
sound their trumpets — trumpets, not of judgment, but of 
judgment accomplished; of judgment finished and of for- 
giveness offered. For the pause of penitence leads to the 
triumph of salvation. 



H 



VII 

5ty* &?tnt of (&tmtm&B 



Heaven alone will reveal the names of those essentially 
great. But we rejoice when those whom men call great 
ascribe their success to the power of God. 

Said President Garfield : " Make the most of the present 
moment. No occasion is unworthy of our best efforts. 
God often uses humble occasions and little things to 
shape the course of a man's life. I might say that the 
wearing of a certain pair of stockings led to a complete 
change in my life. I had made a trip as a boy on a canal 
boat, and was expecting to leave home for another trip, but 
I accidentally injured my foot in chopping wood. The 
blue dye in the home-made socks poisoned the wound, and 
I was kept at home. A revival broke out in the neighbor- 
hood meanwhile, and I was thus kept within its influence 
and was converted. New desires and new purposes then 
took possession of me, and I was determined to seek an 
education that I might live more usefully for Christ." 




©If? Bnnt ttf (&vmtmBB 



Thy gentleness hath made me great." — Psalm 18 : 35. 



HY gentleness hath made me great." The 
Psalmist here lays upon us the necessity of 
taking two points — the gentleness of God 
and the greatness of man. 



First, then, as to The Gentleness of God. 

To define the term " gentleness " is to injure it. We 
may take a prism and separate a shaft of light into its 
elemental colors, but in so doing we injure the light and 
rob it of its beneficence. Let it rest undiverted and un- 
thwarted upon the flowers ! We may take a bud and care- 
fully dissect it, and have for our pains a list of discon- 
certing names in the place of a thing of beauty and a joy 
forever. So we may take the word " gentleness " and talk 
pleasantly of what it involves — clemency, condescension, 
humility, courtesy, but these collectively do not give out 
the happy fragrance of the word itself. If any humble 
human word is worthy to be linked with the name of 
God, it is the word " gentleness." Let us acquaint our- 
selves with its tenderness. 

It seems at first a misfit; we are more accustomed to 
hear of the majesty of God, the sovereignty of God, the 
glorious strength of the right hand of God. We are ac- 
customed to picture Him (and rightly) driving His ene- 

99 



100 The Undying Torch 

mies as the whirlwind driveth the leaves through the fields 
or the crackling fire through the stubble. Is it not well 
then that we should be brought to think of the gentlfeness 
of God? 

1. His gentleness is revealed in the unveiling of the 
Trinity. The Scriptures are capable not only of a two- 
fold but a threefold division. From Genesis to Malachi, 
the Father revealed; from Matthew to John, the Son 
revealed; from The Acts to the Apocalypse, the Holy 
Spirit revealed. Only in outline is this division justified, 
positively and not negatively. The Father is in all the 
Book ; the Son is in all the Book ; the Spirit is in all the 
Book. Yet each Person in the Trinity has an emphasis 
of revelation and in this threefold unfolding nothing so 
amazes us as the invincible gentleness of God. 

Some seem to think that the God of the Old Testament 
was arbitrary, provincial, and sanguinary, and needs the 
apologies of these later times. How far from the truth ! 
Jehovah is indeed sovereign but how beneficent and how 
gentle ! Creation itself is deliberately and gently achieved. 
The speaking of a word floods that creation with noiseless 
light. The first man, sinning, is sought after and pleaded 
with. The foul sinner, Cain, flying from man's anger to 
God's gentleness for protection, received from Him, not a 
brand of infamy, as some imagine, but a mark of protec- 
tion. 

The Father-God of the Old Testament waits patiently 
through the centuries for men who will permit Him to 
reveal Himself. Ignored or rebuked by myriads of men 
through millenniums of time, at last His gentle methods 
find an Abraham. 



The Secret of Greatness 101 

We wonder at the dealings of Christ with Peter — no 
less marvelous are the dealings of Jehovah with Jacob. 
Jacob, too, best illustrates the dealings of God with Israel. 
No people were more unworthy or more false to their 
high calling, yet language exhausts itself and history be- 
comes monotonous in describing the faithful gentleness of 
Jehovah to a headstrong, ungrateful and insulting people. 
The record is irritating. It is so unlike ourselves — this 
gentleness of God in history. 

And then, too, there is the gentleness of the Son. 

He comes on the scene with the soft step of a babe. 
His childhood and youth are covered with a veil but once 
lifted in thirty years. His ministry was so gentle that it 
is best described in Isaiah's tender phrase : " A bruised 
reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not 
quench." That is, when He passes through life and finds 
a lily stalk bent across His pathway, He does not tread it 
under foot, but pauses and lifts its head and gives it new 
lease of life. If He finds the thinnest spiral of smoke ris- 
ing from the heart of a bunch of flax He does not stamp 
it out in disgust but tenderly breathes upon it until the 
smoke becomes a spark and the spark becomes a leaping 
flame. Thus He remakes marred lives and cherishes the 
least sign of spiritual fervor in the breasts of His dis- 
ciples. His very miracles were as quiet as the light. He 
touched blind eyes and they saw. He prayed a prayer, so 
brief and so gentle that it did not even catch in the minds 
of the disciples, yet it furnished a feast for five thousand 
pilgrims. Not until all were seated and quieted would He 
perform that miracle. He but spoke to Lazarus, and the 
brother of Martha arose from the dead. He preached a 



102 The Undying Torch 

gentle message. He avoided all coercion. His prevailing 
tone was earnest and loving appeal. 

Just when He arose from the dead we know not. It 
was so quietly done that angels must needs come to an- 
nounce it as accomplished. Even they, in rolling back the 
stone from the door, spake not save through their shining 
faces. When He left this earth He did it after a quiet 
chat on the slopes of Olivet, and a soft, noiseless cloud 
received Him out of the sight of men. When He comes 
again to receive His own, it will be with a far-sounding 
trumpet, but it will be a trumpet that only the believer's 
ear shall register, for He shall take His own to Him 
quietly into the skies without the knowledge of the world. 
And when He comes even in awful judgment on the Anti- 
Christ, He will use the quietness of a gentle method, for 
He will not destroy him by a display of armament but by 
a sight and a sigh. He shall destroy him by " the bright- 
ness of His appearing and the breath of His mouth ! 9i 

Add to these reflections the gentleness of the Holy 
Ghost. 

Before His advent, our Lord said of Him, " He shall 
not speak of Himself/' and so quietly hath the Holy 
Spirit labored through the ages both in the material and 
moral universe that we are deceived by this very gentle- 
ness. It is true that, at the Saviour's advent, angels sang, 
and at the advent of the Holy Ghost there was the organ- 
sound of the rushing, mighty wind though not, you will 
observe, the terror of its dread impact. But the glorious 
work of the Holy Spirit in conviction and conversion, in 
regeneration and sanctification, in guidance and glorifica- 
tion, is gentle beyond all our telling ! 



The Secret of Greatness 103 

Sometimes at their conversion men are fairly convulsed, 
but the cause of this is their hard-dying rebellion. The 
Spirit's part in that conversion is utterly quiet. The voice 
of the Spirit is described to us in the eighth chapter of the 
epistle to the Romans as " groanings that cannot be ut- 
tered/' Just as Jesus, on His way to Lazarus' tomb, 
groaned within Himself — gave evidence of an unutterable 
sorrow and speechless wrestling as contrasted with the 
wild groans of hired mourners — so within the soul of man 
the Spirit works His glorious work with soundless voice, 
with messages and methods as noiseless as a beam of light. 

He came, the Mystic, Heavenly Dove, 
With sheltering wings outspread, 
The holy balm of peace and love 
On earth to shed. 

And every virtue we possess, 
And every victory won, 
And every thought of holiness 
Are His alone. 

Even apart from the Scriptures and their revelations 
of gentleness in the unveiled and declared Trinity, it is 
necessary for us to predicate gentleness in our speculative 
thought concerning the being of God and the very essence 
of His nature. His very nature is the source and reason 
of His gentle methods, for, observe : 

Gentleness flows from strength. Only the weak and 
pretentious need to be harsh. Only those whose rights 
and prerogatives are endangered find it necessary to be 
sharp, arbitrary, and overbearing. God is omnipotent. 
We cannot think any less thought than that of Him. He 
is all-powerful. His gentleness flows from His strength. 



104 The Undying Torch 

Gentleness flows from pence. We ever associate the 
two thoughts in mind. The heart of God is perfect peace. 
Vast as are the radiumlike activities of His being, He is 
at perfect rest. 

Central peace, subsisting at the heart of endless agitation. 

The gentleness of God toward man flows from the rest- 
fulness of His own nature. "My peace I give unto you! " 

Gentleness flows from knowledge. It is when men are 
old and experienced in life and not so apt to be deceived 
by its surface illusions that they refuse to answer in the 
spirit of provocation or quickly resent opposition. They 
know human nature too well to be unduly harsh. You 
will remember Jean Valjean surrounded by men who 
threatened to torture him on a brazier unless he did their 
evil will. Out of the long experiences of his heart he 
refuses to hate them and cries even as he arms himself, 
" I am not afraid of you, and you need have no fear of 
me ! " So the thief who attacks him for his purse is first 
beaten for the purposes of the social good and is then 
presented with the purse he sought by force to gain. Jean 
Valjean had imbibed too deeply of life to let hatred or 
bitterness overcome him. Out of a profound knowledge 
of life comes — gentleness. It was because Lincoln was 
himself of the South and knew the heart of the South that 
he refused to be bitter toward a gallant but mistaken 
people. So out of the all-knowledge of God flows the blest 
stream of His reviving gentleness. 

Gentleness comes from suffering. Courtesy is an old- 
fashioned word. It means heart-manners. A gentleman 
is one whose thoughtfulness is prompted by a sensitive 




BAPTISTERY AND CHOIR 
First Baptist Church of Pasadena 



The Secret of Greatness 105 

heart. It is the heart of God that dictates His gentle 
method with man. That heart is a heart of compassion. 
In the vast affection of the Almighty there is a particular 
place, real and glorious, for every erring son of earth. 
We have to do with a suffering God. He gave His only 
Begotten Son. Those who learn the lesson of suffering in 
their own bereavements and agonies are most gentle with 
others. It is God's love which dictates the holy delicacy 
and tenderness of His dealings with mankind. 

Let us endeavor to hold, then, this unspeakable gentle- 
ness of God in mind as we go on to speak of 

II 

The Greatness of Man 

" Thy gentleness hath made me great." 

Man's greatness — wherever he attains it — is achieved 
by means of the gentleness of God. It is only His method 
of gentleness with your soul that affords you even the pos- 
sibility of greatness. 

By greatness we mean something nobler than talent or 
genius or peculiar natural endowment. Men may have 
great minds, yet be little men. Men may burn with the 
fires of genius yet be thereby destroyed and shrivel those 
who follow them. 

Bacon was one of the greatest of minds and the meanest 
of men. It was one of the great misfortunes of Germany 
that her most brilliant mind in literature — that of Goethe 
— and her most original mind in music — that of Wagner 
— were both attached to weak and selfish souls. The 
tragedy of Byron is not that he fell so low but that he 



106 The Undying Torch 

was equipped to rise so high. He only is great who is 
great in character. He only is great who greatly uses 
such talents, magnificent or meagre, as he may possess. 

True greatness is the resultant of God's gentleness, for 
His gentleness gives to man's soul the greatness of liberty. 
Plunge into metaphysics as we will, we still know that 
the soul is endowed with liberty to choose the evil or the 
good. God not only refuses to coerce us, but deliberately 
equips us with the means to resist Him. 

You will remember, to refer again to Victor Hugo, the 
notable passage in which Marius, after an impassioned 
portrayal of the glories of Napoleon's regime, cries to his 
young Republican companions in the cafe, " And what can 
be more glorious than this ? " A Republican sprang to his 
feet and with flashing eyes exclaimed, " It is better that 
Frenchmen should be free!" 

There have been despots, governments, and religions 
innumerable that have sought to enslave men, but they 
must whine in vain for Divine approval. God will not 
coerce the conscience or soul of that man whom He hath 
made free, nor will He lend His name and authority to 
any government or religion which violates civil or 
religious liberty. Romanism is despotic and in so far 
deserves no man's allegiance. What a glorious hour 
would Rome insure for herself if she would heed the 
voice of God, convene an ecumenical council, and renounce 
forever the principle of coercion in religion! 

Mohammedanism is despotic and it is folly for the 
governments of earth to do less with it than demand that 
it too be solemnly revised by its own devotees in the 
interest of civil and religious liberty. 



The Secret of Greatness 107 

Under the sacred shadow of the Stars and Stripes we 
have developed two despotic American religions — Mor- 
monism and Christian Science. Mormonism has every 
essential earmark of hell. It is unclean, politically trai- 
torous, founded upon an absurd and palpable falsehood, 
fattens upon ignorance, hides behind secret oaths and 
obligations, and its whole mechanism is controlled by a 
group of despots who enjoy petty tyrannizing over the 
lives of their miserable dupes. Christian Science is of a 
different complexion. Mormonism is aptly called the 
Islam of America, and Christian Science a revival of 
Buddhism in America. On its organizational side, how- 
ever, Christian Science is thoroughly tyrannical. A group 
of self-perpetuating trustees controls every reader, healer, 
and full member of the organization and may at any time 
excommunicate any one of them without assigning cause. 
A side-light upon the organization of Christian Science is 
found in a by-law of the Mother Church in Boston : 

If the author of the Christian Science text-book (Mrs. Eddy) 
eall on this Board for household help or a handmaid, the Board 
shall immediately appoint a proper member of its church therefor, 
and the appointee shall go immediately in response to the call. 
" He that loveth father or mother more than me is not 
worthy of me." 

This combination of tyranny and blasphemy is found in 
Section 15 of Article 22 of the Church Manual. The 
entire article should be read. Even then it will be diffi- 
cult to believe one is not reading a foot-note on the 
Spanish Inquisition! 

The world has scarcely known a false religion that has 
not been strongly marked by despotic control. It is the 



108 The Undying Torch 

first and simplest of duties for true men everywhere to 
resist tyrants whether they be political or religious. There 
must be no coercion in religion and no bowing down to 
petty tyrannies lest we lose our own souls. It is essentially 
ungodly to surrender the freedom of the soul to a pope or 
a prophet or a Mormon hierarchy, or a John Alexander 
Dowie, or a Mary Baker Eddy, or a Madarn Elavatsky. 
It ever will remain a religious duty to resist tyranny, be it 
petty or pretentious. 

In the fateful year of 1914 I was in Italy. The great 
diapason of war sounded north of the Alps. I hurried 
to France to catch a glimpse of the mobilization. But 
with all the engrossing excitement of the hour I stopped 
off at Milan, unwilling to pass the Cathedral without pay- 
ing homage to it. I carried away two vivid impressions. 
I was first of all drawn irresistibly to the famous Rose 
Window. At my first glimpse the light radiating through 
it and falling between the great stone columns and 
along the stone pavements of the mighty aisles reminded 
me of a sunset once viewed through the gigantic fir trees 
in a far-off canyon of the Cascades. Drawing nearer I 
discovered that the soft fires of this indescribably beauti- 
ful light were mediated through many small panes of 
rosy glass which, taken together, made up the whole of 
the window. Each of these panes represented an episode 
in the life and ministry of our Lord. As I stood gazing 
upon this mighty memorial to the life and love of Christ, 
and meditating upon the long years of its preparation and 
the long centuries of its testimony, I felt that I had never 
seen a more fitting portrayal of the glory, beauty, and 
greatness of my Saviour. Here the fires of the sunset 



The Secret of Greatness 109 

inflamed to indescribable beauty the patient artistry of 
men long centuries ago turned to dust. 

I detached myself reluctantly from its contemplation 
and passed toward the entrance of the Cathedral. About 
midway to the door I was offended by the sight of a paint- 
ing so modern as to seem utterly out of place in the 
ancient edifice. Hanging against an old stone pillar, its 
bright gilt frame seemed calculated to fairly hurt the eyes 
of one who had just feasted upon the soft tints and 
colorings of the famous window. But when I noticed the 
contents of that frame I stopped abruptly. It was one 
of the two existing copies of Holman Hunt's famous 
painting of Christ knocking at the door. You will remem- 
ber it. The Saviour is standing in the moonlight before 
the door of a trellised cottage, over which the vines are 
twining. In one hand He holds a lantern. The other He 
has raised and with it is knocking upon the door, while 
His kingly head is slightly inclined as though His ear 
would catch the sound of the first response within, and 
as He stands and knocks there glows in His eyes an 
eagerness and love that enthrall the soul of the beholder. 

It will be recalled that when the artist had completed 
the painting and was giving a private view of it to a 
brother artist, it met with but a single criticism. " There 
merits are so great," said his friend, " that I hesitate to 
offer a suggestion. It is a trivial matter. You have for- 
gotten the latch upon the door." Responded the artist, 
" The door upon which our Lord knocks is the human 
heart. The latch of that door is on the inside," 

In the Rose Window I was reminded of the greatness 
and diversity of the Christ ; in the painting before me I 
i 



110 The Undying Torch 

was reminded that His method with man is so gentle that 
He will force the lock of no man's heart. His gentleness 
guarantees to us our greatness. " Behold I stand at the 
door and knock. If any man will open the door, I will 
come in and sup with him and he with Me." Man hath the 
greatness of liberty. He is the captain of his own destiny. 
He can bar the door or open the door. He can take a 
Pilot or refuse a Pilot. He may choose life or death, 
the abyss or the heights, heaven or hell. God's gentleness 
hath made him great. 

Character is only possible as a resultant of right or 
wrong choice. God's gentleness in its refusal to coerce 
us and in its insistent laying before us of the possibilities 
of right and wrong, offers to us the only possibility 
of greatness of character. And even at conversion the 
soul makes only the beginning of choices. Simon Peter 
comes to Christ. But Peter has other crises to face. He 
must renounce father, mother, home and business. He 
still later must face the prospect of a crucified Leader. 
Still later he loses a great battle for loyalty. The last 
historical notice we have of him, he is still struggling to 
do the right and, in the estimation of Paul at least, not 
always succeeding. Yet by reading the career of Peter 
in the Gospels, then in the Acts, and finally viewing the 
heart of Peter as revealed in his own two epistles, we see 
that a truly great character has evolved. Ah, the gentle- 
ness of Jesus in dealings with Peter ! " He turned and 
looked upon Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly! " 

Do you grieve over the ever-renewed battle on old and 
new fields ? Does the Almighty seem cruel to you in ever 
presenting before your soul the constantly renewed alter- 



The Secret of Greatness 111 

natives of good and evil, of truth or falsehood, of fidelity 
or unfaithfulness? Do not complain. It is only thus that 
He can develop in His children spiritual greatness. 

O, watch, and fight, and pray; 

The battle ne'er give o'er; 
Renew it boldly day by day 

And help Divine implore. 

Ill 

It is too the gentleness of God which offers to man 
the greatness of voluntary devotion, 

The Greatness of Loyalty in Liberty 
His method is such that rightly contemplated and un- 
derstood we are moved to render to Him our highest ser- 
vice. No greatness is possible to the human soul while 
that soul lives for self. " He that would save his life 
shall lose it/' A thousand potentially great leaders have 
crumbled into littleness here. Ten thousand times ten 
thousand souls have fallen into the dust of defeat at this 
point. They would not forget or forsake self. 

But the general method of God, presenting Himself as 
Saviour and Lord, and refusing to coerce the will, offering 
to mankind all spiritual blessing on the simple conditions 
of responding and receiving — this is the method that 
awakens within us the great qualities of gratitude, devo- 
tion and loyalty. 

The Corsican's well-known remark, cold as it is and 
egotistic, points this thought : " Alexander, Caesar, Hanni- 
bal and myself tried to found an empire on force. We 
failed. Jesus of Nazareth founded His upon love and He 
has succeeded." 



112 The Undying Torch 

It is the method of God in the Gospel to exhibit His 
Cross. Thus exalted in history, in Scripture, in preach- 
ing, in art, in architecture, in literature, it has evoked the 
highest passions of men and lifted a multitude of them 
out of mediocrity into a distinction of devotion that can 
only be characterized as true and essential greatness. Wit- 
ness Paul, Chrysostom, Francis, Jerome, Xavier, Bayard, 
Duff, Chalmers, and a legion more. The whitest and 
brightest pages of human history are those wherein are 
recorded the moral triumphs of holy loyalty freely offered 
at the feet of that Christ who scorns to threaten us into 
His ranks. 

Add to this fascinating line of thought the fact that 
the gentleness of God offers to man the greatness of 
humility. 

This after all is the choicest flower of the garden of 
virtues. It is the rarest and most fragrant. All sin 
roots itself in pride. It is the parent stem. Humility is 
the root virtue. Even in popular conceptions of greatness 
mankind turns instinctively to those whose greatness of 
talent is permeated with the greatness of humility. Grant, 
the man of simplicity; Brooks, the man of reticence and 
modesty ; Lee, quiet and patient ; " Chinese " Gordon, 
more fearful of applause than of bullets ; Lincoln, humble 
and compassionate — these have the hall-mark of the 
essential virtue — humility. 

Now God's method fairly thrusts upon us the oppor- 
tunity for this phase of greatness. For His method offers 
salvation without condition. The gift is free. It is in a 
double sense priceless. It has been purchased by the 
ultimate treasure of Jesus' blood that the bankrupt soul of 



The Secret of Greatness 113 

-- 

man might be offered its benefits for the mere taking. 
Man is never so great in the realm of his inner life as 
when he lays aside all thought of earning, all hope of 
deserving, all folly of making himself worthy and humbly 
takes with simplicity and deep-hearted gratitude the gift 
of God. 

William James reminds us that the most striking thing 
about the evangelical faith is that it makes righteousness 
imperative and yet insists upon the abandonment of any 
hope in human merit. The salvation of the soul, it insists, 
must be a matter of untainted grace. " The wages of 
sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through 
Jesus Christ our Lord ! " 

Humility, then, is the vital virtue of the soul. It alone 
is willing to receive without thought of returning or in 
any measure earning the favor of God. When next we 
see penitent men passing down the aisles of a church or 
mission-hall, humbly confessing their need of Christ and 
His forgiveness, let us not sneer, but rather look on with 
reverence, for we are looking at men in the hour of their 
greatness. When, alone, with some soul seeking Christ, we 
note the bowed head and hear the first trembling petition 
for mercy, let us believe that we are on most holy ground. 
We are witnessing an operation of grace and we are 
conscious that in the soul of our penitent friend a 
wondrous flower has blossomed, a profound virtue has 
already shown itself. 

A white- faced wreck, upon the bed she lay, 
And reaped the whirlwind of her yesterday; 
Before her rose the record of the past 
And sin's dark wages all were due at last. 



114 The Undying Torch 

A gentle messenger of God was there 

Who kissed her brow and smoothed her tangled hair, 

And in the tend'rest accents told of One 

Who died for her — God's well-beloved Son. 

" No power could ransom such as I ! " she cried. 
"No cleansing stream my crimson sins could hide. 

For souls like yours there may be pardon free. 

The Son of God would never stoop to me ! " 

" I bring a gift of love," the listener said, 

" This dewy rose of richest, deepest red. 

Will you not take it, have you not the power ? " 

The trembling fingers reached and grasped the flower. 

" My sister," said the giver, " just as I 
Held out to you the rose of scarlet dye 
God offers you salvation from above 
Through Jesus' precious blood — His gift of love. 

" Reach out and take it without doubt or fear." 
" It is so simple," sobbed the girl, " so near ? " 
" Nearer than myself to you He stands, 
Eternal life within His pierced hands." 

"So simple, Lord," she moaned. v "Nothing to do 
But reach and take eternal life from you? 
I take it, Lord," and lo! the dying eyes 
Were radiant with the light of Paradise. 

Oh, death triumphant, victory complete, 
Today she worships at the Saviour's feet. 
Lost one, God offers you for Jesus' sake 
Eternal life; will you not reach and take? 

There were three significant episodes in the life of Gen- 
eral Oliver Howard. Observe the first episode. The 
battle of Fair Oaks was raging. Against heavy odds 
Howard's brigade has been fighting desperately hour after 
hour. The Union line is falling back, exacting a bitter 
price for every acre of ground yielded to the Confeder- 



The Secret of Greatness 115 

ates. At a highly critical moment Howard's left arm is 
shattered by a cannon ball. As he falls from his horse 
he is caught by one of his staff, gently lowered to a litter, 
and started back toward the field-hospital. Far to the 
rear, General Philip Kearney has heard the roar of the 
Confederate attack. He is bringing his brigade up to 
Howard's rescue. Riding ahead of his men he meets the 
litter upon which Howard is being carried. Kearney is a 
veteran of the Mexican War. His right sleeve is empty. 
Howard is an old friend of his. With an exclamation of 
pity he springs from his horse, halts the bearers of the 
litter, and says, " General Howard, I am sorry to see you 
in this condition." Howard looks up at him and smiles. 
" The next time we buy gloves, Kearney, ,, he replies, 
" it will be to our advantage to shop together ! " 

Note the second episode. The war is over and the 
victory is won. General Howard has fought with con- 
spicuous bravery at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, at 
Resaca, and at Atlanta. He has commanded one wing 
of Sherman's Army from Atlanta to the sea and from 
Savannah to Washington. It is the night before the 
Grand Review of Sherman's Army up Pennsylvania 
Avenue. General Sherman approaches General Howard. 
" Howard," said he, " the friends of General John A. 
Logan of Illinois felt that I did him an injustice after the 
battle of Atlanta, when I failed to give him the place that 
I gave you. I have no regret. I appointed you because I 
believed you would do your work well and you have ful- 
filled my expectations. I am asking you, however, to give 
your place tomorrow to General Logan." Howard hesi- 
tates. " That is a strange request, General Sherman," 



116 The Undying Torch 

said he. " I have led these men through the entire cam- 
paign. My place is at their head." General Sherman 
looked at him searchingly. " Howard," he said, " you are 
a Christian. I want you to yield to General Logan." In- 
stantly Howard responds : " When you put it on that 
ground, sir, there is but one possible answer. I gladly 
yield my place in the line to General Logan." The morn- 
ing of the great review arrives. Once more General Sher- 
man approaches General Howard. " General," he says, 
"yesterday you granted me a favor. Today you must 
obey an order. Your place in the line will be at my 
side at the head of the entire Army." 

Note the third episode, It is the greatest of the three. 
The scene is at Key West, Florida. In time it is long 
prior to the other two. Howard has but recently gradu- 
ated from West Point. He has been given command of 
his first post. He is unknown to fame as yet, and wears 
the modest insignia of a captain. It is Sunday evening, 
and he is sitting in a little Methodist church. Some of his 
soldiers are also in attendance. The minister preaches 
earnestly Christ's sweet gospel and then urges an immedi- 
ate decision. There is a response. Men and women go 
forward and kneel at the penitent form. As they do so, 
a group of soliders openly sneer and mock at them. The 
young captain notices it. The finest resolution of his 
life crystallizes. He rises from his pew, steps forward 
down the aisle. He drops upon his knees. " I thus 
endeavored to lead my men," said he, " from scorn of 
Christ to obedience and repentance." 

The gentleness of God grants to men the possibility of 
the greatness of humility. 



The Secret of Greatness 117 

But there is a terror in the thought of God's gentleness. 
It leaves upon us the responsibility of our own sours sal- 
vation. Will not God arouse us in spite of ourselves? 
Will He not force us into a right decision? The solemn 
answer is " No." The very ease with which we may mis- 
treat an appeal of Christ is disturbing and alarming. 

Oh, unsaved man, take heed to thy treatment of God's 
Son. How fatally easy did the Jews find it to crucify 
Him. How easily does the world thrust Him aside today. 
With what complacency and nonchalance do Felix and 
Festus and Agrippa brush his truth from their minds. 
Think not that because thy soul is not coerced by loud 
alarms and thine eyes frightened by hideous portents in 
the sky, that the issue is not critical with thee and the 
crisis grave ! 

God's methods are ever noiseless. Light! Growth! 
Crystallization! Beware lest thou fail to heed the quiet 
working of God with thy soul. His voice is low. His 
Spirit is tender. Oh, take thou heed of the gentleness of 
God. Loud and strident are the voices of sin. Boldly the 
world presses its specious pleas. But yield thou to the 
tender solicitation of God's gentleness. Repent thee ; trust 
thy Lord; receive the gift of eternal life. Accent the 
triple crown of proper greatness! 



VIII 

©ijp PaHsmg Worth 



John A. Bingham, ex-minister to Japan, on one occasion 
said : " Ingersoll and others ridicule my belief in a future 
life. I think I have the better of them. If I am mistaken, 
I shall never be conscious of it; neither will they. If they 
are mistaken, they will be conscious of it, and so will I." 

Augustus Strong reminds us that Homer regarded the 
body as more important than the soul, for Achilles had 
rather be " a slave on earth than the monarch of all the 
dead " ; but to Vergil the soul is the superior thing and 
the body is its place of imprisonment. Vergil declared the 
soul to be a caged eagle waiting for death that it might 
soar into its native air. 

The noted German physician Knope said : " Do I believe 
in immortality? Do you think I shall not be here because 
a valve in my heart will not open ? " 

Christ is the death of death, and the life of life ! 




©If* f aumttg Wavlb 

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the 
world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is 
not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh 
and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life, is not of the 
Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and 
the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth 
for ever."— 1 John 2 : 15-17. 

^ E are born to love. Love is the very acme 
of human experience. It is the finest flower 
of the garden of life. It is the brightest 
nugget in the mine of life. The world can- 
not look upon the humblest pair of lovers 
with indifference and the memory of its great lovers, 
conspicuous in their faithfulness, seems well-nigh imper- 
ishable ; Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan, Laura 
and Petrarch, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Jahan 
and Mumtaz Mahal, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Brown- 
ing. 

We may content ourselves for a time with the genius of 
a Liszt or a Wagner, but the inevitable question emerges, 
"Were they triumphantly faithful and unsullied in 
love ? " Napoleon's marching columns and all the thunder 
of his cannon cannot drown the sobs of Josephine. Love is 
the very man himself. What he loves he is. " Out of the 
heart are the issues of life/' " Whatsoever a man think- 
eth in his heart so is he." It is the distinction of our 
present text that it first of all guides the affections. 

121 



122 The Undying Torch 

" Love not the world" The word here is " the cos- 
mos " — the great, amazing, bewildering display of Na- 
ture. It is the world of created wonders. " And God 
saw everything that He had made and behold it was very 
good." Even marred by the entrance of sin, Nature is not 
to be abhorred. Nothing could be farther from the 
apostle's mind than to have men seem indifferent to the 
countless miracles of God's creation. Nature is not 
enough regarded by us. Oh that the Christian would give 
a keener attention to the things of this life-bearing world 
— these many worlds — that we stumblingly call Nature, 
the world that chemistry knows, that biology reveals, that 
geology uncovers, that botany interprets, that astronomy 
annexes, so that, if we will, we may see the great that 
distance makes obscure, and the near which is tiny beyond 
the reach of our unaided vision. In our text there is no 
warrant for ignoring these things for the appreciation of 
which the human mind was most evidently created. 

But Nature apart from God has no moral value. It is 
amazing how sin prospers in sublime places. The God- 
insulting cancer of Pompeiian life spread itself against the 
vine-clad slopes of Vesuvius and was overarched by the 
most tantalizingly beautiful of skies. Monte Carlo, that 
licensed highwayman of nations, shows itself serenely on 
a dazzling Mediterranean shore. The evil gleam of the 
red lights of the old Alaskan mining camps burned against 
the pure halo of the Northern lights of the Arctic Circle. 
Our very city parks must needs be illumined carefully or 
they soon become scenes of debauchery. There is in Na- 
ture as much seduction as instruction. Nature-worship- 
ers have ever been notorious for evil living. He is right 



The Passing World 123 

who is a student of Nature, but he is utterly wrong who 
brings to it the heart-tribute of affection. How silly is the 
man who prates of his love for Nature ; who tells us that 
he " worships " color and " adores " life and form. He 
is a wretched dupe, a modern idolater. 

Love not the world ! Charles Spurgeon illustrates for 
us the right attitude toward the vast world of phenomena. 
It was while on an Alpine excursion that he turned (as he 
seldom did) from prose to verse, and laid the mighty 
mountains under tribute to the unutterable greatness of 
Jehovah. 

Yon Alps, that lift their heads above the clouds, 
And hold familiar converse with the stars 
Are dust, at which the balance trembleth not 
Compared with His Divine immensity. 
The snow-crowned summits fail to set Him forth, 
Who dwelleth in eternity, and bears 
Alone the Name of High and Lofty One. 
Depths unfathomed are too shallow to express 
The wisdom and the knowledge of the Lord. 
The mirror of the creatures has no space 
To bear the image of the Infinite. 
'Tis true, the Lord hath fairly writ His Name, 
And set His seal upon Creation's brow; 
But, as the skillful potter much excels 
The vessel which he fashions on the wheel, 
E'en so, but in proportion greater far, 
Jehovah's self transcends His noblest works. 
Earth's ponderous wheels would break, her axles snap, 
If freighted with the load of Deity. 
Space is too narrow for the Eternal's rest, 
And Time too short a footstool for His Throne. 
E'en avalanche and thunder lack a voice 
To utter the full volume of His praise. 
How then can I declare Him? Where are words 
With which my glowing tongue may speak His Name ? 
Silent I bow, and humbly I adore. 



124 The Undying Torch 

" Love not the world, neither the things that are in the 
world/' And why? " For all that is in the world, the 
lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the vainglory 
of life, are not of the Father but of the world." Now, 
note carefully. Give good heed to what the apostle does 
not say. He does not say that flesh is not of God, for 
God made the body and honors it. He does not say that 
the eye is not of God, for the delicate organ of sight and 
observation and appreciation is one of God's supremest 
miracles. He does not say that life is not of God, for He 
created humanity and He declares His love to the whole 
world by the giving of His Son. The apostle carefully 
says that the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the 
vainglory (or " the braggart boast " or " the empty 
pomp ") of life are not of the Father. These perversions 
have not their origin in Him, but rather arise out of a dis- 
organized, presumptuous, sin-tormented, and actively re- 
bellious state of society. 

" The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the 
vainglory of life." Here does the apostle give us a com- 
plete catalogue! Here is multum in parvo. Every evil 
that curses the soul of man is here comprehended. This 
threefold comprehension of the allurement of iniquity 
points the mind in two directions. It points us to the 
first Adam. He felt the lust of the flesh for "the tree 
was good for food." He yielded to the lust of the eyes 
for it is written that " the fruit of the tree was a delight 
to the eye." The vainglory of life seduced him, for " the 
fruit of the tree was desired to make one wise." The 
assault upon the soul of the second Adam was in no wise 
different. To the heavenly Adam came the suggestion to 



The Passing World 125 

indulge the lust of the flesh and " make these stones into 
bread." To Him also came the invitation to enter the 
arena of vulgar display — to cast Himself down from the 
pinnacle of the temple that angels, bearing Him up, might 
introduce Him in this dramatic fashion to the admiring 
throngs of temple worshipers. And where is the " brag- 
gart boast " of life made more appealing than in the final 
test of the Adversary who offers in return for a single 
act of homage all " the kingdoms of the earth and the 
glory (or boast) of them "? 

After all, Satan has but these three bits of bait to offer 
the human soul — Appetite, Avarice, and Ambition. Oh, 
the countless processional entering the dark shades of 
spiritual death, of moral tragedy! Could we review that 
awful pageant of despair, what faces we would see and 
what testimonies we would hear! It was the lust of the 
flesh that slew the soul of Antony, of Goethe, of Byron, 
and of Rousseau. It was the lust of the eyes, eyes which 
caught the gleam of forbidden things, that depraved the 
souls of Judas Iscariot and of Benedict Arnold. It was 
the empty pomp of life that lured into eternal misery the 
spirits of Catherine of Russia, of Metternich and of 
Napoleon. 

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the 
world. 

The apostle here not only guides the affections, turning 
them sternly away from anything less than the love of 
God Himself, but he also makes effective his counsel by 
arousing the reason. Here is indeed a text from which 
no man can dissent. Here is one who harnesses the 
thoughtful mind as he proceeds to give us an unanswer- 

K 



126 The Undying Torch 

able reason for detaching our affections from the created 
world or from the tempting rewards of perverted human 
life. 

The world passeth away. Observe it is not here said 
that the world will eventually pass away. It is truly said 
that it is already passing! It is dissolving before our 
very eyes. The very things that allure the souls of men 
are proven to be cheats by the very process of Nature. 
Death is slaying the lust of the flesh. No sooner hath 
Satan caused the soul of a man to yield to lust than he 
begins to aim at him a special animosity. Who is so open 
to slaughter as the victim of 1 lust? How do the glutton 
and the filthy and the indulgent drop prematurely from 
the ranks of life! How must Satan laugh with horrid 
laughter as he first induces the souls of men to yield to 
indulgence and then opens upon them as though they were 
but cattle in the slaughter pen ! 

Experience, sad-eyed experience, is everywhere dis- 
illusioning men. The lust of the eyes is found to be a 
will-o'-the-wisp. Adam plucks his apple and it turns to 
ashes. One prize after another is relinquished in bitter 
disappointment. Even the Christless man is given every 
opportunity to see the folly of sin. All about us the 
allurements of sin compose themselves only to decom- 
pose. " Change and decay in all around we see. ,, 

And what shall we say of the vainglory of life? A little 
consideration shows us that it is indeed vain. Up to our 
startled ears, through the soft persuasions and loud prom- 
ises of the world, sound the groans of the dying, the 
despair of the disillusioned, the wretched victims of 
physical and mental and spiritual suffering. Devotees of 



The Passing World 127 

worldliness, wearied by their sins, look at us out of faces 
that have the deadness of soulless things. How easily is 
the veneer of life ripped off! How speedily do we see 
through all this vain pretension. Others, following us, 
may be cheated for a season by its shallow boast, but as 
for us it is impossible that we should long believe in the 
lying promises of the world. It is said that some men 
think that they have left their vices when their vices leave 
them. It is very true that vices do their work with us 
and then, having burned out any desire we may have for 
their repetition, they will mock us by the fact of our 
disillusionment. Oh, how wretched must Satan be at the 
utter monotony of his own work. He must ever have 
new souls to dupe, for his own servants who may have 
destroyed all their spiritual possibilities in his service are 
at the same time under no delusion concerning him — 
though they have been so slow to learn. 

" The world is passing away." Yes, and the very 
material frame-work of creation is passing away. As- 
tronomers and geologists may prate of time ; may compute 
their billions of years of continued life upon this planet, 
but they are a unit in giving us a solemn assent to the 
great fact that the world, and all we know of the universe, 
is passing away. The mountains are descending to the 
hills, and the hills are eroding into the plains, and the 
plains are silting into the sea. The very rocks are rot- 
ting. With slow deliberation the sun is withdrawing his 
shining. The ultimate of this vast world is a mere puff 
of cosmic dust. Time will drift our very planet into 
multitudinous particles and distribute them through the 
unwalled chambers of Space. The strange inhabitants 



128 The Undying Torch 

of far-off Neptune may some day breathe into their very 
lungs the last infinitesimal fragments of our once mighty 
globe. The stars themselves are all subject to change. 
The world passeth away and the lust thereof. Human life 
on this planet will one day be a thing of the forgotten 
past ; its evil lust but a record in the archives of the all- 
remembering God. The world passeth away and the lust 
thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. 
Therefore, O Soul of man, let grace-instructed reason 
rule thee! 

And now out of this solemn text with its vast implica- 
tions let us conclude by sounding out a note of tenderness. 
In the word of the apostle there lies a contrast — the love 
of the world and the love of the Father. O Christian, love 
not the world but find your way through Nature to the 
fact of God. Love not the world, but seek the heart of 
One who through Jesus Christ you may dare to call 
Father ! How unspeakably sad to see the worldling fasten 
his affection upon passions that will soon burn themselves 
out, upon sins that will soon betray and embitter the soul. 
How miserable to know a philosopher of earth so con- 
cerned with the phenomena of creation that he plumbs 
the depths to uncover the hidden secrets thereof, and 
leaps through space to assay the stars, yet never knows 
within his heart the thrilling love of the heavenly Father 
in whose great Miracle-House he freely explores. 

O Christian, let naught satisfy thee short of the love 
of the Father. 

You will remember how Henry Van Dyke has taught 
us this great lesson in " The Lost Word." Hermas, who 
has left heathenism and his patrician father's home to 



The Passing World 129 

serve Christ, becomes dissatisfied with what he has found 
in the Christian life and service, and becomes possessed 
of the desire to live out his life at the full without sub- 
jecting himself to the old rites of the cast-off Grecian 
paganism or the exacting requirements of his new-found 
religion. You will call to mind that the mysterious phi- 
losopher, Marcion, takes advantage of this mood and 
offers to Hermas love, wealth, and fame in exchange for 
but a single word — that word the name of the Christian's 
God. He gives indeed to Hermas wealth, love, and fame, 
but when at last there enters his perfect home the grim 
figure of calamity and the young son of Hermas and 
Athenais was stricken and smitten and in the shadow of 
death, then, when the father in his agony sought relief of 
heaven, alas, there was a word he had lost, a word he 
had bargained away, the value and virtue of which were 
more than all the honors and riches of life. Then it was 
that John Chrysostom of Antioch spoke his solemn word 
of rebuke, and cried: 

My son, you have sinned deeper than you know. The word 
with which you parted so lightly is the key-word of all life. 
Without it the world has no meaning, existence no peace, death 
no refuge. It is the word that purifies love, and comforts 
grief, and keeps hope alive forever. It is the most precious 
word that ever ear has heard, or mind has known, or heart has 
conceived. It is the name of Him, Who has given us life and 
breath and all things richly to enjoy; the name of Him Who 
though we may forget Him, never forgets us; the name of Him 
Who pities us as you pity your suffering child ; the name of Him 
Who, though we wander far from Him, seeks us in the wilder- 
ness and sent His Son, even as His Son has sent me this night, 
to breathe again that forgotten name in the heart that is 
perishing without it. Listen, my son, with all your soul to 
the blessed name of God — Our Father! 



130 The Undying Torch 

Woe to him who has lost out of his life that living 
touch with the Heavenly Father; that soul to whom the 
world is real and God unreal. Let every heart in every 
breast leap to the heart of God. Be not cheated with 
lesser things. 

" Love not the world, neither the things that are in the 
world. If any man love the world, the love of the 
Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust 
of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of 
life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the 
world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that 
doeth the will of God forever lives ! " 



IX 

3tmt JteiH of % 3ntt of (Etjnat 



Robert Browning was the miracle-mind of his time. 
No man had less pretense and no man of his day more 
profundity. It was not in carelessness that he said: 

"The acknowledgment of God in Christ, accepted by thy 
reason, 
Solves for thee all questions in the earth and out of it, 
And hath so far advanced thee to be wise." 

O, what a manysided fact is the fact of Christ! The 
flashing beauty of this unspeakable Gem halts even Mr. 
H. G. Wells and extracts from him the words: 

" To take Him seriously was to enter upon a strange and 
alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and 
impulses, to essay an incredible happiness. ... Is it any 
wonder that to this day this Galilean is too much for our 
small hearts?" 

Well, the apostles took Jesus Christ seriously and found 
the incredible happiness ! 




3rmt 3$utttB of tty 3fctrt of ffifjrtat 

" Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the 
saints in Christ Jesus that are in Philippi, with the bishops and 
deacons; Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the 
Lord Jesus Christ."— Phil. 1 : 1, 2. 

HE most fascinating of all games is the game 
of chess. It has taken centuries to perfect it. 
The pieces have become almost perfectly ad- 
justed to one another. Innumerable combi- 
nations are possible. Now imagine that a 
chess-player is permitted suddenly to put upon the chess- 
board, amongst all the pawns, bishops, knights and mon- 
archs, a new and ranking piece. Imagine that this new 
piece moves with freedom no other piece enjoys. Such an 
innovation would involve the readjustment of every piece 
upon the board. It would necessitate the revision of the 
entire game. 

Upon the ancient chess-board of the Roman Empire, 
amidst all its activities of state, commerce, and religion, 
there was suddenly introduced a new and tremendous 
fact. What was this fact? It was this. Jesus, son of 
Mary of Nazareth in Roman Syria, was crucified under 
Pontius Pilate, died, rose from the dead, and forty days 
later ascended into heaven. 

That fact created confusion in the whole structure of 
life. Wherever it was proclaimed and men believed it, it 
jostled all things about. Its mighty world-changing sig- 
nificance is seen in the very phraseology of our text. 

133 



134 The Undying Torch 

Paul, who has been captured by the fact of Christ, opens 
his epistle to the Philippian Church by a salutation which 
itself contains four facets of the fact of Christ. 



The first words that the Apostle dictates are these, 
"Paul and Timothy, the slaves of Christ Jesus." As 
Timothy wrote these words down he did not object to 
them. They appealed to him as entirely proper. Yet, 
they were strange and new words to the Roman world. 
Paul was a Roman citizen, yet he writes himself down 
as a " slave," (so the word "bond-servant" means). 
Timothy was the child of a Jewish mother and a Greek 
father, and had the fiery independence of youth. Yet, he 
willingly permitted Paul to describe him also as a " slave." 
It is a strange, arresting figure of speech, " slaves of 
Christ Jesus." The word " Christ " means " a King," and 
kings have slaves. But the word " Jesus " means a " De- 
liverer." Slaves of a Deliverer! Slaves of an Emanci- 
pator ! 

Now the explanation of this intense term lies back in 
the experience of both men. Go back to the record and 
study the conversion of Paul. The one thing that over- 
whelmed Paul and led him to become a Christian was the 
example of Stephen when he was stoned to death. Years 
afterward, Paul in a prayer to Jehovah in Jerusalem con- 
fessed, " When the blood of Thy martyr Stephen was 
shed, I also was standing by, and consenting, and keeping 
the garments of them that slew him" (Acts 22: 19, 20). 
What joy it would have been to the dying Stephen, who 
saw only hatred in the face of Saul of Tarsus, if he could 



Four Facets of the Fact of Christ 135 

have known that the man who urged on the riot and 
kept the thieves in the crowd from stealing the garments 
of those who were throwing rocks at him, was to become 
the greatest preacher of the gospel the world has ever 
known! The dying grace given to Stephen was the ex- 
hibit that convinced Paul of the nobility of Christ's ser- 
vice. It was but a few days later that Paul was lying in 
the midst of the Damascus road, saying with passionate 
humility, " Lord, what shall I do ? " He had entered the 
service of the King of kings. He had become a willing 
slave. 

The odd thing about Timothy's conversion is that he, 
too, probably became a convert to Christ through witness- 
ing a man stoned for Christ's sake. It was in his home 
town of Lystra that Paul was stoned. In the last letter 
Paul ever wrote he addressed himself to Timothy and 
said, " Thou didst follow my sufferings, what things 
befell me at Lystra." Timothy had heard the apostle 
preach the gospel, had witnessed the rising of the city 
against him, had doubtless seen the stones hurled at the 
intrepid preacher, and perhaps had seen him ministered 
unto after he had been abandoned for dead and taken into 
his own home by his godly Jewish grandmother, Lois, and 
his mother Eunice. When, later on, Paul comes back 
through Lystra, Timothy goes with the hero-preacher and 
gladly becomes a bond-servant of Jesus Christ. 

Oh, the glorious service of Christ! It is a service so 
wonderful that the most discriminating mind of the think- 
ing man, the most ardent spirit of eager youth, are alike 
willing to yield to its mastery. It was from the lowest 
classes of society that the Roman Empire was overthrown. 



136 The Undying Torch 

The gospel made slaves of men and then made men of 
slaves. It entered the palace of the Caesars through the 
doors of the kitchen and the barracks. What a divine 
paradox ! It is the men who are willing bond-servants of 
Jesus Christ who in the end will break the bondage of 
earthly superstition and tyranny. It is said of the Puri- 
tans that they feared God so much that they feared 
tyrants not at all. 

II 

Paul goes on with his dictation. " Paul and Timothy, 
slaves of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who 
are at Philippic 

The first facet of the fact of Christ which meets our 
attention in this epistle is the service of Christ. The 
second facet of the fact of Christ is the security that is 
in Christ — " the saints that are at Philippi in Christ 
Jesus." There are two thoughts here. The word " saint/' 
of course, means one who is taken out of one kind of ser- 
vice and put to another kind of service. What kind of 
people are these saints? We are quite well acquainted 
with three of them. One was named Lydia. She was a 
capable business woman, a seller of purple dyes. She 
was a Jewess and a woman of prayer. Her heart opened 
up like a flower to the gospel which Paul preached by the 
river-bank in Philippi. She gladly gave herself and her 
residence to the furthering of the gospel. She had lived 
a good life, but now she is living a conspicuously useful 
life. She makes her household a gospel center. She was 
passive, but now becomes active. 

Another of these saints at Philippi was a humble, 



Four Facets of the Fact of Christ 137 

fortune-telling damsel. She had a mysterious power. Evil 
men used her to extort money from other men. She was 
a sport and a decoy for designing men. But she hears the 
gospel preached in the streets. She is converted. She 
becomes sane and quieted. 

Another of these saints was a Roman soldier who had 
charge of the jail where Paul was confined. He was 
brutal and merciless, but the power of Jesus Christ laid 
hold of him. He became compassionate and tender. He 
humbly washed the blood from the back of the apostle 
whom he had a few hours before his conversion cruelly 
scourged. 

These are samples of the Philippian sainthood. They 
had been taken out of one use and put to another use. 
They had been their natural selves ; now they became spir- 
itual servants of a heavenly Master. Lydia had been 
thinking about profits; now she was thinking about 
Christian hospitality. The divining damsel had been an 
asset for conscienceless men; now she is restored to a 
true and quiet womanhood. The Roman jailor had been 
the servant of his city and its officials; he now has be- 
come a servant of the Son of God. 

Observe that Paul said " in Christ." Literally it is into 
Christ. 

Perhaps the most profoundly satisfying of all the ex- 
pressions of Paul to the minds of tempted, yet aspiring 
disciples, is the term in Christ. What did he mean by it ? 
And what do we mean ourselves when we quote it? 
Listen ! We are, upon our acceptance of Him by a reliant 
trust, placed so far within Him that all our dealings with 
life thereafter are in reality His dealings with life. Placed 



138 The Undying Torch 

by sovereign grace within Christ means that we are forti- 
fied about with His limitless power. 

It is when we forget our utter security that we allow 
ourselves to be browbeaten and irritated and even 
frightened by the enemies without. Satan's servants may 
insult us across the picket-line of God's power. They may 
look direful and threatening. But unless we leave the 
sacred ground of our privilege in Christ they can never 
reach us. They will be as impotent as the swords of the 
charging French cavalry at Waterloo against the long, 
bayoneted muskets of Wellington's infantry. We are en- 
closed, but not secluded. We are sheep which rejoice all 
the more in their place of security in the fold because the 
howl of the wolves comes out of the dark, surrounding 
night. 

There is much difference of opinion as to just the extent 
of our immunity. Does our enclosure in Christ relieve us 
from all the disabilities of sickness ? Does it remove from 
us the harassment of an evil nature? Differ we will on 
some of these questions, but we should not allow these 
divergences in view to weaken our joy in our protected 
position, for as Hannah Whitall Smith has suggested in 
her " Christian's Secret of a Happy Life," the Christian 
moves about in an armor that can never be pierced unless 
it be so by something ordained of God's love. But then, 
instead of a missile, the circumstance or chastening that 
seems to pierce our armor does not really do so, but is 
welded into the very nature of our defenses. 

Our Lord tells us in a single discourse two very differ- 
ent things. He tells us first, that not a hair of the dis- 
ciples' heads will be harmed. Shortly after He remarks 



Four Facets of the Fact of Christ 139 

that some of these protected disciples will be brought be- 
fore the judgment-seats of the Empire, and will be slain. 
" What gain have we," cries Little Faith, " if our hair is 
protected but our heads removed ? " Evidently our 
Saviour is teaching that not the slightest evil can mar 
the souls of His own — that even the dreadful harrying 
of a Nero or a Domitian is utterly harmless to the believer 
who has, amongst his treasures within the will of God, 
abundant resources to meet even so terrible emergencies. 
" All things team together for good to them that are called 
according to His purpose." 

Within the holy enclosure of the Christian life there 
may be possibilities of disease, of torture, or death, but 
these are meek servants of the will of God. There is 
naught but His will in the lot of the one who accepts the 
privilege of " the enclosed life." All that then comes to 
us comes with the endorsement of our Father's wonder- 
fully tender and considerate will. All that brings pressure 
to the soul, and that calls for the price of effort, of endur- 
ance, of physical tax and pain, of soul-suffering, is abso- 
lutely harmless and positively and constructively bene- 
ficial. 

Think, then, of living in an experience so protected and 
fortified and impregnable that even disease and pain and 
sorrow and death can enter your lives only by becoming 
your humble servants. 

There is even such a state of soul to be attained by us 
that we shall greet these strange servants with a fairly 
complete understanding of their work within us and a 
very happy acquiescence in God's employment of them for 
His purpose. 



140 The Undying Torch 

Think of the phrase, " The good pleasure of His will." 
We may have understood it so poorly as to allow the sug- 
gestion of harshness or arbitrary exercise of God's power. 
But no. The thought is the goodly or beautiful pleasant- 
ness of God's plan. The enclosed life is the life which is 
not only protected, but preserved, or parked. We become, 
each and every one, God's garden plot, and nothing enters 
that will not beautify. 

An English general, ministered to by the dread servant 
death, still could cry, " I die happy." And General Wolfe 
was indeed happy, for death had served him with a vic- 
tory. So in the will of God there is the atmosphere of 
happiness even in circumstances that worldlings shrink 
from, for in the garden of His will there is never the evil 
shadow of defeat. 

Christ, then, having cleansed, or more properly, cleared 
us from sin by His blood, doth by virtue of that same 
sacrifice place about us the impenetrable circle of the 
power of an endless life. And the application is quite 
obvious. For if we are fenced in, if we are peculiar 
ground, 

Enclosed by grace, 

Out of the workTs wide wilderness; 

if we are in Christ, if we are hidden in Him, and are 
buried with Him and raised and ascended with Him in 
heavenly places — why the easy yieldings to frettings and 
furies and grievings and bickerings and fearful appre- 
hensions? Why so little of calm and serenity and holi- 
ness ? Why the dreadfully frequent dealings with sin ? 

The answer is simple : If we are enclosed, let us recog- 
nize our blest estate. Let us crown within our minds the 



Four Facets of the Fact of Christ 141 

fact of our security. Let us inquire of our Redeemer as 
to why we are not realizing the riches of our grace-given 
position. Let us gaze often and praisefully upon the liv- 
ing Lord, whose sentry-beat encircles our souls. Let us 
interest ourselves more thoughtfully in His daily pro- 
tective work in our behalf. We will find with increasing 
surprise and joy that the giants set against us become 
as grasshoppers when set against Him. The real gist of 
the victory and calm and happiness of the enclosed life is 
not to be found in strenuous endeavor, but in a simple 
daily, hourly trust in our great Redeemer's ability to deal 
with all of life's circumstances. 

The secret of victory in the Christian life is wrapped 
up in the thought that the saints are at Philippi, but they 
are in Christ ! 

Ill 

The third facet of the fact of Christ is the serenity 
flowing from the Christ. " Grace to you and peace from 
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." This open- 
ing benediction of the Philippian Epistle sweeps the 
strings of both the Old and the New Testament. The 
salutation of the old dispensation was " Peace." The key- 
word of the new dispensation was " Grace." Grace is the 
ranking term. It is inclusive. Grace is in general. Peace 
is a resultant particular. When Paul writes, " Grace to 
you," he has in mind the whole gracious attitude of God, 
His undeserved love and steadfast compassion. When he 
writes, " Peace to you," he has in mind the most vital par- 
ticular of grace. Peace is that quality which distinguishes 
the Christian preeminently from other men. 



142 The Undying Torch 

We instinctively feel that a petulant, or restless or irri- 
table spirit, or an outbreak of temper, is utterly un- 
christian. It is true there are some placid people, in- 
capable of a burst of temper, who are utterly useless to 
the Kingdom of God. One of the best men I have ever 
known, periodically exploded and scattered his opinion 
of things in general in all directions. But he was inex- 
cusable. Christians should feel deeply but they should, 
by divine grace, harness these feelings to the tasks of the 
Kingdom of God. Escaping steam is an ear-irritant, but 
steam in the steam-box is the servant of civilization. We 
remember the action of Nelson, as the Battle of Trafalgar 
was about to open. He demanded that two of his officers, 
Collingwood and Rotherham, who had held a grudge 
against one another, should shake hands upon the deck 
of his flagship in the presence of the officers of the fleet. 
" Shake hands like Englishmen," he said. " The enemy is 
not here, but yonder." 

The portion of the Christian church is peace. The 
privilege of the individual Christian is peace. 

Oh, this full and perfect peace! 
Oh, this transport all divine! 
In a love which cannot cease, 
I am His, and He is mine! 

Heaven above is softer blue, 
Earth around is sweeter green; 
Something lives in every hue 
Christless eyes have never seen. 

Birds with gladder songs o'erflow, 
Flowers with deeper beauties shine, 
Since I know, as now I know, 
I am His, and He is mine! 



Four Facets of the Fact of Christ 143 

IV 

The fourth facet of the fact of Christ is suggested in 
the further words of Paul, " Grace and peace to you from 
God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" Here is an 
utterance that the ancient world greatly needed. To the 
polytheistic heathen world, confused, astray in mind and 
heart, Paul holds out the torch of the unity and father- 
hood of God. To the Jew, who was the custodian of 
the oracles of God, he holds out the splendor of Messianic 
fulfilment. To the one he cries, " God our Father." To 
the other, "Jesus, the Master and Messiah." It is in 
proportion as men receive this utterance that the warring- 
gods of the world are resolved into one great God of 
peace, and the spiritual aspirations of the world are real- 
ized through acceptance of Christ as Lord and Saviour. 

And how profoundly significant it is that Paul, the Jew- 
ish Rabbi, is placing upon a common level the unspeak- 
able name of Jehovah and the despised name of Jesus. 

The fourth facet of the fact of Christ, then, is His 
supremacy. He is supreme over mankind, the rightful 
Head of the race, the One to whom all allegiance and 
obedience are due. It is a great discovery when a seeking 
soul unveils the fact that Christ is God. This is but the 
preliminary to the discovery that God is Christ. Let us 
put together these two thoughts ; the deity of Christ, and 
the Christliness of Deity. 

What an infinite comfort to know that the mighty God 
who is behind all the phenomena of Nature ; that the God 
who so utterly transcends us and who differs so vastly 
from us, is the One who became incarnate at Bethlehem 



144 The Undying Torch 

and ascended from Olivet. He is the God of the Gospels. 
Christ is God, and God is Christ. It is through this 
mystic, double channel that grace and peace are mediated 
to a thirsty world. Let us close our study by giving glory 
to the supremacy of the Christ. 

Of all the treasures I looked upon in the city of Rome I 
was most impressed by that piece of white plaster perhaps 
twelve inches square which had been taken from the bar- 
rack wall of the Praetorian Guard of Caracalla. It con- 
tained a rude caricature of a man upon a cross. The 
body was of a man, but the head was that of an ass. 
Beneath this crucified figure a soldier was kneeling 
with his hand outstretched in the Greek attitude of ador- 
ation. There was also a rude lettering in Greek, " Alexa- 
menos adores his God." Evidently some sneering officer 
thus mocked the faith of some comrade in the regiment 
who had caught the glory of the deity of Christ. Let us 
be the worthy successors of Alexamenos. 

It is said of the dying Bede that, having dictated the 
translation of the last sentence of the Gospel of John 
into English from the Latin, he asked to be carried to 
the window of his cell where he had often stood, and 
looking out upon the beauty of the world, had given 
praise to God. For the last time he gazed through the 
casement and with his final strength he said, " Now, glory 
be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." 

Thanks be to the Holy Spirit who inspired the apostle 
to write this epistle. Thanks be to the God of all compas- 
sion who is our heavenly Father. Thanks be to Jesus 
Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour, who is the supreme 
head of the redeemed humanity. 



X 

®Iyr %nanb (taring of G&nr 3Cnrn 



Charles Spurgeon found in a second-hand bookshop 
a volume by Andrew Bonar on "Leviticus." He was de- 
lighted and sent the book to Bonar, asking him to place 
in it his autograph and photograph and to return it as 
quickly as possible. In a few days the book was returned ; 
with it a little note. 

" Dear Spurgeon : Here is the autograph and the photo- 
graph, but if you had been willing to wait a little while, I 
might have given you a better likeness, for ' when He shall 
appear I shall be like Him, for I shall see Him as He 
is!'" 




"Therefore be ye also ready; for in an hour that ye think 
not the Son of Man cometh."— Matt. 24 : 44. 

HE presiding theme of the Bible is righteous- 
ness and the vital theme is redemption. The 
preaching of the Cross is the need of the 
hour. The duty is laid upon us all — not 
only in the Scriptures of God but also in the 
peculiar difficulties and opportunities of the modern world 
— to uphold the Cross of Atonement and Regeneration. 
Postmillenialists, premillennialists, and promillennialists 
can meet in holy resolve at Calvary, and using that holy 
Mount as a base, sweep on to evangelize the world for 
Christ. 

Let us never forget, while discussing the Second Com- 
ing of our Lord, that in His first coming there was pro- 
vided the complete redemption of the soul of man from 
the guilt and power of sin. Therefore the present-hour 
emphasis should be upon the Cross. The Cross is always 
central. 

Yet it is a good thing to look boldly at the grand ulti- 
mate objectives of the Bible. The present theological 
emphasis on the Second Advent is of real service. Only 
those who give this culminating truth its pivotal place 
can sweep the centuries with understanding eyes. 

I covet for every social worker the veritable cosmic 
thrill and the steadying comfort that come from " The 

147 



148 The Undying Torch 

Blessed Hope." Sir Robertson Nicoll has wisely said 
that it would be to the advantage of the Church to hear 
more of His coming from her preachers. 

" Therefore be ye also ready; for in an hour that ye 
think not, the Son of Man cometh!' 

Yet we must beware lest we join " the lunatic fringe " 
of the eschatologists who abuse the doctrine of the Second 
Advent by ludicrous literalism and their stubborn ex- 
communication of all who do not see with them in every 
minute detail of their elaborate schemes. 

I sometimes meet a man so wise in the Scriptures as to 
believe in the imminent return of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
It is a rich day for any Bible student when that solemn, 
sober, yet glorious fact becomes a part of his knowledge 
and anticipation. But occasionally this man, with the 
precious possession of the Blessed Hope, fails to see its 
social significance. He reads of the moral degeneration 
that will apparently immediately precede the final phase 
of the Second Advent, and he hastily infers that man is a 
failure; that in a sense God has abandoned the working 
out of a perfect social order on this planet and therefore 
" Social Service " is a misuse of Christian energy. Why 
slave to rectify human conditions when the Scriptures, 
which cannot lie, prophesy a final failure and collapse? 

This man fails to get a telescopic view of Bible teach- 
ing. He does not see that each dispensation ends with an 
ebb-tide of failure and degradation, but that each incom- 
ing dispensation is fuller and richer than its predecessor. 
He does not consider that the social gain, as dispensation 
follows dispensation, far outweighs all losses, and that 
the march of the elect across the planet in successive 



The Second Coming of Our Lord 149 

generations is destined to culminate in both a dread 
catastrophe of judgment and a glorious resultant of social 
redemption. 

It is true that our Lord will personally establish His 
kingdom, but only in part will He bring its materials 
with Him. Just as no king on earth ever erected from 
imported materials an entirely new government, so Christ 
Jesus will not cast aside the spiritual achievements of 
the centuries, but will bind them into His Messianic mil- 
lennium and His new heavens and new earth. He is the 
David as well as the Solomon of the temple of the king- 
dom. He is now gathering His spiritual materials both 
on earth and in heaven. 

If we remember the waves on the ocean beach we shall 
be helped to a right view. One roller succeeds another 
roller, until at last the time for the " seventh wave " 
occurs. This wave, destined to climb farther up in victory 
over the shore than its predecessors, will be preceded by 
a veritable uncovering of all the ugliness of the ocean-bed. 
The whole sea seems to retreat as a preparation, showing 
the winding weeds and slimy rocks and uncouth life of 
the ooze. Then comes the glory of the great oscillation 
and a coruscating cathedral of flashing foam builds itself 
over the uncovered ugliness, and moves in majestic might 
far up above the highest mark yet attained by the tide. 

Let us, therefore, labor on. The waves come and go, 
but the tide comes in. No effort either of evangelism or 
social service, undertaken for love of Christ, will be 
swept away, but be conserved by the events of the future. 

Avoiding all fatalism and all fanaticism, let us then 
search the Scriptures for the truth concerning His com- 



150 The Undying Torch 

ing, and let us eagerly and modestly share our discoveries 
with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. 
For these are times when, as Dr. Robert Speer has 
phrased it, " we need the star of the Second Advent to 
steer by." 



Some one has well said that " the first promise of the 
Bible is of the First Advent of Christ and the second 
promise is of His Second Advent. But the initial Messi- 
anic verse of the Word contains in germ both advents." 
" And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and 
between thy seed and her seed; and he shall bruise thy 
head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." 

Not fulfilled completely yet ! 

What a long trail the old serpent hath made! 

Christ shall yet give the final stamp upon the writhing, 
unspeakably base thing. Robert Browning reminds us 
that the attitude of faith is to stand upon the serpent and 
feel it, beneath your heel, struggle in its helplessness. 
Yet we cannot but long for the day when the poisonous 
fangs shall threaten no more! 

The second promise of grace is emphatically of the 
Second Advent. "And Enoch, the seventh from Adam, 
prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord came with ten thou- 
sands of his holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and 
to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness 
which they have ungodly wrought, and of all the hard 
things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him" 
(Jude, 14, 15). Bonar has quaintly said that Enoch had 
to sustain his godly life " but two crumbs of the Bread of 



The Second Coming of Our Lord 151 

Life." These two crumbs were the passage we know as 
Genesis 3 : 15, and a personal revelation of the final and 
triumphant Coming of the Christ, as indicated by Jude 14. 
Closely studied there appear in these protoplasmic prom- 
ises the doctrines of the humanity and divinity of our 
Lord, of His humiliation and suffering, and also of His 
ultimate and glorious victory and vindication. 

II 

And what the promises embedded in the Law suggest, 

the Psalms as openly declare. They declare the universal 

reign of Christ. Saith the Son of God in the Second 

Psalm : 

I will tell of the decree. Jehovah said unto me, " Thou art 
my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me and I will 
give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts 
of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with 
a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's 
vessel. Now therefore be wise, O ye kings; be instructed, ye 
judges of the earth. Serve Jehovah with fear, and rejoice with 
trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish in the 
way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all they 
that take refuge in him ! " 

And to choose but one from among many, let us read 

again that mighty passage which declares so nobly the 

ultimate triumph of righteousness, and closes with the 

appeal : 

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; 

Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; 

Let the field exult, and all that is therein ; 

Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy 

Before Jehovah; for he cometh, 

For he cometh to judge the world; 

He will judge the world with righteousness 

And the peoples with his truth. 



152 The Undying Torch 



III 

The prophets also gleam with the watch-fires of holy 
expectation. The singing, seraphic Isaiah gave to the 
world far more than a Christmas promise in the ninth 
chapter of his book: 

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the 
government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be 
called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, 
Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of 
peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon 
his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with 
righteousness from henceforth even forever. 

If possible Zechariah is even more striking in his pas- 
sionate prophecy: 

I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants 
of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they 
shall look upon me [literally, upon the Aleph-Tav] whom they 
have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth 
for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is 
in bitterness for his first-born (Zech. 12 : 10). 

Nor can we omit the vision of Daniel : 

I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like a Son of man 
came with the clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient 
of Days, and they brought him near before him. And there was 
given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the 
peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion 
is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his 
kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. 

Phillips Brooks, climbing up on a roof at Damascus, 
read the concluding lines of this prophecy, still carved 
deeply in the wall of an ancient Christian church, now the 
leading mosque of Damascus. I understand that a similar 



The Second Coming of Our Lord 153 

inscription shows beneath the whitewash on the interior 
of the dome of St. Sophia. Who that loves Christ Jesus 
doubts that they will, despite all reactions and setbacks, 
be gloriously fulfilled in the coming of the Christ to 
reign ? 

Yes, the Old Testament openly and repeatedly declares 
the coming of the King to reign. It is well that we should 
listen as its last prophet raises the solemn question : 

Who can abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand 
when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire and like 
fuller's soap, and he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; 
and he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and 
silver and they shall offer unto Jehovah offerings in righteousness. 

IV 

When we study the pages of the New Testament we are 
well-nigh blinded by the apocalyptic splendor of its 
visions and declarations. In particular there is the witness 
of Our Lord to His own Second Coming. 

The Gospels are too often read in a patch-work fashion. 
They thus assume in our minds the character of loosely 
collected memoirs. But each Gospel unveils a carefully 
wrought-out plan and progression Taken together they 
show a deliberate unfolding of the character, purpose, and 
teaching of the Redeemer. This is strikingly shown in 
that there are three great vital facts which are left un- 
taught until the heart of Christ's earthly ministry is 
reached. These are the fact of the Cross, the fact of the 
Church, and the fact of the Second Coming, Taken 
together they constitute almost the complete spiritual land- 
scape of the modern Christian. But none of this vast 



154 The Undying Torch 

reach of truths is openly taught until more than half of 
the gospel material is covered. It is profoundly sig- 
nificant that these three revelations occur at the same time 
and under the same set of circumstances. The three 
realms of the Cross, the Church, and the Consummation 
are one realm, and we should be chary of dividing 
them. 

Let us take Matthew's Gospel as the most compre- 
hensive and look at the triple revelation at Caesarea- 
Philippi. The Cross : " He must suffer, be killed, and the 
third day be raised up." The Church : " Upon this rock I 
will build my Church!' The Coming: "For the Son of 
Man shall come in the glory of his Father with the angels, 
and then shall he render unto every man according to his 
deeds" (Matt. 16 : 13-27). 

The Great Teacher, having taught successfully His first 
lesson, " Who I am/' opens up and previews His second 
lesson, " What I am to do." Observe that the Cross He 
taught was glorified by the hope of His Coming. 

Then follows immediately that significant promise, 
" There are some of them that stand here who shall not 
taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his 
kingdom." At first sight it looks as though the Lord Jesus 
had promised that some should not die till they had seen 
the coming of his Messianic kingdom. But this is errone- 
ous — they were to see the glory of the King by anticipa- 
tion. The Transfiguration is to the doctrine of the Second 
Advent what the Fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is to the 
Atonement — a marvelous preview. For in the Trans- 
figuration we have the leading elements of the Second 
Advent : 



The Second Coming of Our Lord 155 

1. The Saviour triumphant and transfigured. 

2. The Saviour supreme, unique and suitably attended. 

3. The chosen disciples caught up into a rapturous ex- 
perience. 

4. Other disciples below and in difficulties. 

5. The trumpet-declaration of God, " This is My 
Son!" 

Long after the events of the Transfiguration, Peter 
refers to it and links it to the prophetic word, as yet 
unfulfilled, concerning the Second Advent. Note his 
words : 

We were eye-witnesses of his majesty .... For we received 
from the Father honor and glory when there was borne such a 
voice to him by the majestic glory, This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased; and this voice we ourselves heard 
borne out of heaven, when we were with him in the holy 
mount .... And we have the word of prophecy made more sure ; 
whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining 
in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the Day-Star arise in 
your hearts. 

And later on in the Gospel material comes the blended, 
threefold vision on Olivet. The account in Matthew's 
twenty-fifth chapter is best known. The key to this 
remarkable discourse of Our Lord is a triple key — there 
are three turns to the lock. Three queries have been put 
to our Lord: "When shall these things be?" "What 
shall be the sign of thy coming ? " " And of the end of 
the world ? " The interrogators may have imagined this 
to be but one question, but it was three in one. Our 
Master seems to blend His answers as though they were 
separate yet related. A low line of hills may suggest the 
outline of a higher line behind them and these may hold 



156 The Undying Torch 

the same contours as a great mountain range, still more 
remote. So the destruction of Jerusalem answering the 
first question suggests by illustration the second, and the 
Rapture leads on to the Epiphany. 

Following this alluring discourse, glowing with splendid 
beacon-fires of admonition, Christ gives to us His cele- 
brated illustrations of the Advent — the Parable of the 
False Servant, the Parable of the Ten Virgins, the Par- 
able of the Talents, the Parable of the Sheep and the 
Goats. I cannot here analyze or even repeat them, much 
less interpret. Suffice it to say that they all emphasize the 
fact, and enforce the duty of readiness for the Second 
Advent of our Lord. May God's good grace enable us 
to heed them ! 

There follows that remarkable challenge of Christ to 
those who scorned His prophecy of His own return to 
earth as Judge and King. One record of this episode is in 
Matthew 26 : 57-67. It shows us Christ, bloody, helpless, 
crushed (to all appearances) and in the hands of His vile 
enemies. Yet standing thus He cries, " Henceforth ye 
shall see the Son of Man sitting at the Right Hand of 
Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven." It was as 
He thus affirmed His certain advent glory that His 
enemies fell upon Him and struck Him repeatedly in the 
wildest wrath. 

Let ecclesiastical leaders of to-day beware how they 
treat the advent declarations of the Son of God! 

These are but a few of the more striking passages in the 
Gospels, in which our Saviour openly and repeatedly 
taught His Second Coming to the earth. I would recom- 
mend to any desirous of thinking further into the teach- 



The Second Coming of Our Lord 157 

ing of the Gospels a little book entitled Sunrise, written 
by Dr. G. Campbell Morgan and containing a brief sum- 
mary of the teaching of the four Gospel writers on " The 
Blessed Hope." 



And now let us turn briefly to the witness of the apostles 
to the doctrine and fact of the Second Advent. Let us, 
in the language of Jude, " remember the words which have 
been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus 
Christ," and let us not forget that the words of Jude do 
not end with this admonition, but go on to speak of " the 
last times " and against the mockers who lived evil lives 
and ridiculed the hope of the Coming of the King. 

As we examine the apostles we notice that they are an 
unbreakable unit in teaching That Blessed Hope. But we 
also observe that each apostle has his own personality and 
emphasises a favorite phase of the Second Coming. 

With James it was Justice. 

Ye have laid up your treasures in the last days. Behold, the 
hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept 
back by fraud, crieth out; and the cries of them have entered 
into the ears of the Lord Sabaoth. Ye have lived delicately 
on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your 
hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned, ye have killed 
the righteous one; he doth not resist you. Be patient, therefore, 
brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold the husbandman 
waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth. Being patient over 
it, until it receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; 
establish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord is at hand. 

With Jude it was Judgment. 

" Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his 
saints to execute judgment upon all and to convict all the 

M 



158 The Undying Torch 

ungodly of all their works of ungodliness. " Jude is filled 
with wrath at the licentiousness of ungodly men. Both 
point to the coming of Christ as the Judge and the Hope 
of the world. The California earthquake did not con- 
demn any buildings ; it simply destroyed those dishonestly 
made. No first-class building, honestly made, fell. So 
God's judgment at the Appearing will only reveal the pre- 
tenses of hypocritical human society — the cheap building 
on false foundations. 

With Peter it was Majesty. 

Our Lord had prophesied that Peter should be slain 
and the apostle never wavered in his conviction that he 
should die in the manner intimated by Christ. Neverthe- 
less Peter expected the return of his Lord. 

And I think it right, so long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir 
you up by putting you in remembrance ! Knowing that the 
putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly, even as our Lord 
Jesus Christ signified unto me [see the whole interesting episode 
of John 21 : 18-23]. Yea, I will give diligence that at every 
time ye may be able after my decease to call these things to 
remembrance. For we did not follow cunningly devised fables 
when we made known unto you the power and coming of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye-witnesses of his majesty. For 
he received from God the Father, honor and glory .... by the 
Majestic Glory." 

It was Peter who first awoke to the fact that a king was 
in the midst of Israel and the kingly Redeemer pro- 
foundly moved the Fisherman-Apostle. He longed for 
the vindication before all men of the majesty of the 
Nazarene. 

With Paul it was the Rapture. 

The comfort and compassion of the Advent was more 



The Second Coming of Our Lord 159 

fully set forth by him than by the other apostles. To all 
of them Christ's return to earth was passionately expected 
and desired. To Paul it contained the consummation of a 
divine judgment, but also the consummation of a divine 
comforting and healing. 

Several years ago I corresponded with the veteran 
Congregational missionary, Doctor House, of Saloniki 
(Thessalonica). He told me that only one inscription had 
been recovered from old Roman Thessalonica that was 
certainly a part of the city in Paul's time. It was an 
inscription at the gate of the cemetery and in substance 
read: 

After the grave no meeting, 
After death, no greeting. 

Into the shadows of that ancient, nebulous, sorrowful, 
hopeless conception, Paul sends the glowing torch of his 
faith in the Risen, Coming Christ : 

But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them 
that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest who have 
no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even 
so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with 
him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that 
we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall 
in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord 
himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice 
of the archangel and the trump of God; and the dead in Christ 
shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall, 
together with him, be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord 
in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore 
comfort one another with these words (1 Thess. 4 : 13-18). 

These words of Paul I have found in my experience 
to be, with the exception only of the declarations of our 
Lord in John's Eleventh and Fourteenth Chapters, the 



160 The Undying Torch 

most comforting and inspiring funeral text in the New 
Testament. 

With Apollos it was Fulfilment. 

And inasmuch as it is appointed unto men once to die, and 
after this cometh judgment; so Christ also, having been once 
offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, apart 
from sin, to them that wait for him, unto salvation (Heb. 9 : 28). 

Apollos (or Luke, or Barnabas, or whosoever wrote the 
Epistle to the Hebrews) is writing of the fulfilment of the 
old in the new. The picture here is of the high priest of 
Israel on the Day of Atonement. He passes through the 
three courts of the temple with tinkling bells on his robes 
and carrying the basin of sacrificial blood, while outside 
the great multitude await his reappearance. This they 
always greeted with acclaim. Thus hath Christ, Our High 
Priest, gone into the Heavenly Court for us, bearing His 
blood, to appear again on earth to those who look for and 
" love His appearing." 

With John it was Purity. 

Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon 
us that we should be called children of God; and such we are. 
For this cause the world knoweth us not because it knew him 
not. Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made 
manifest what we shall be. We know that if he shall be mani- 
fested, we shall be like him for we shall see him even as he is. 
And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself, 
even as he is pure (1 John 3 : 1-3). 

Purity was the passion of John's heart. He longed with 
unspeakable longing for the Coming of Christ and found 
in that longing a purifying flame. 



The Second Coming of Our Lord 161 



VI 

I now close. I have been attempting an utterly impos- 
sible task — the setting forth in a balanced way the teach- 
ing of the Bible on the Second Coming of Christ in the 
limits of a single address. I have omitted many of the 
most vital and vigorous passages, have only skimmed on 
the surface of the teaching, have purposely omitted all 
reference to the Book of Revelation, which is particularly 
rich in advent inspiration, and can only hope that I may 
have induced some minister of Christ's sweet gospel, who 
has hitherto neglected to make a particular study of " The 
Blessed Hope," to begin that study this very day. I am 
hoping that, as education increases, unworthy and cheap 
misuses of the Second Coming of Christ will cease to have 
an audience. I am also hoping that an increasingly ex- 
pository ministry of The Word will characterize American 
pulpits, and if my expectation is realized, " The Blessed 
Hope " will take its rightful place in the preaching of the 
ministry and the thinking of the Church. God hasten 
the day! 

It seems to come but slowly. Jesus said, " A little 
while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father." 
We are perplexed as were the disciples long ago. 

" A little while— a little while," O ! Master, 

What is it Thou hast said? 
The long train of expectant years grows vaster; 
The deep, dark tide of sin flows fuller, faster; 

We listen for Thy tread. 
Hope, watching, stands, her storm-tossed vessel steering; 
But the dark heavens vouchsafe no sign of Thine 
Appearing. 



162 The Undying Torch 

" A little while ! " Faith reads the promise over, 

While louder roars the storm; 
Then gazes, keener-eyed than any lover, 
O'er the night-blackened surges, to discover 

Some vestige of Thy form; 
And still, the weary night-march to beguile, 
Repeats, " A little while " : He said, " A little while." 

But Love, with instinct truer, deeper, keener, 

Nor sign nor vision craving, 
Garnering Thy precious words up, as a gleaner 
The golden grain, with heart and brow serener 

For all the tempests raving, 
Feeling Thee near, and, conscious of Thy smile, 
Counts the slow-rolling ages but "a 1 little while." 



XI 



John G. Whittier is writing : " Emerson once said to 
me, 'If there is a future life for us, it is well; if there is 
not, it is well also/ For myself, I trust in the mercy of 
the All-Merciful. What a brief and sad life this of ours 
would be if it did not include the possibility of a love 
that takes hold of eternity! There is no use in arguing 
the question of immortality; one must feel its truth; you 
cannot climb into heaven on a Syllogism. There are some 
self-satisfied souls who, as Charles Lamb says, ' can stalk 
into futurity on stilts ' ; but there are more Fearings and 
Despondencys than Greathearts. I think my loved ones 
are still living and awaiting me, and I wait and trust." 

This is good but the Bible is better. A risen Christ does 
not hand His followers a hope, but a certainty. It is a 
superstition to believe a dying body can infect the soul 
with death. Better still, the eternal life of which Christ 
speaks is a quality of life, a present fellowship with the 
power of God as well as a future vision of the glory 
of God. 




" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." — 
Matt. 5 : 8. 

RELIGIOUS mathematician has discovered 
for us ten thousand promises in the Word 
of God. I venture to say that the chiefest 
of them all is the Sixth Beatitude — " Blessed 
are the pure in heart; for they shall see 
God." The fulfilment of no promise can bring us to a 
higher end than this — to see God. 

To see the work of God is glorious. To observe the 
beauty of the far-reaching autumn fields flaming with 
such colors as only a fallen sunset might afford ; to draw 
the eye along the flowing mountain crests glittering against 
the cobalt sky in their icy ornaments; to watch the 
ceaseless march of the breakers on the pounded shoreline ; 
to behold the wild-flowers blooming across the vast ex- 
panse of the open prairie ; to gaze on the velvet blackness 
of the night sky, spangled over with the solemnizing light 
of distant worlds — this is indeed glorious. But what must 
it be to see the One behind it all! 

To read the Word of God is wondrous. To find a 
volume which interprets Nature, the heart of man, and the 
character of God ; to pass in its study from the creation 
of the world to the creation of the new heavens and the 
new earth ; to review the unveilings of God to patriarchs, 
priests, prophets, kings, and apostles — this is unending 

165 



166 The Undying Torch 

delight. But, oh, instead of seeing only the book, to see 
the Author of it all ! 

To experience the forgiveness of God is surpassing. 
To creep to His feet in sin and penitence, despairingly 
to tell Him the whole story of defeat, daringly to claim 
His ample promise, and then to receive His pardon — 
what bliss there is in such an experience ! But what must 
it be to behold the face of our Emancipator! 

To be under God's providence is joyful. To note His 
workings in the history of man, to discern His judgments 
and deliverances among the nations, to feel one's self 
under His care, to go about in daily life serenely sheltered 
in His providing love — this is, in truth, a sublime privilege 
and an everflowing spring of praise. But, oh, to have 
the privilege of gazing upon our Bounteous and Fatherly 
Protector ! 

Who would not drop David Copperfield to spend an 
hour with Dickens ? Who would not close In Memqriam 
to look upon the actual face of Tennyson? Who blames 
those who left their study of Tolstoy's books and jour- 
neyed to Russia to see the very man himself ? What soul 
of men, then, shall ever be content with God in nature, 
in revelation, in grace, in providence, if he may hope to 
see the Lord God of Love and Majesty Himself? 

" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" 
This is in truth the supreme promise. 

Let the thoughtful man observe the significant present 
tense of this promise of the Christ. The promise finds 
its fulfilment not hereafter, but here; not in the future 
glory, but in the battling present hour. It is here and 
now that men are privileged to see God. 



Attended by the Vision Splendid 167 

It is said by some of earth's great thinkers to be philo- 
sophically true that man can never see God. Granting, 
for argument's sake, that there is a God, Mr. Spencer 
elaborately demonstrates that the human mind can have 
no proper conception of the Infinite. And it is true 
theologically that we dare not see God. It was not an 
arbitrary thought of the Jew that one sight of Jehovah 
would slay the sinner. Can snow endure the fire? Can 
sinful man enter with suavity and complacency the 
Throne Room of Omnipotent Holiness? 

Yet the Scriptures clearly picture the presence of God 
as the final goal of redeemed humanity. It is by no care- 
less act of authorship that the description of the judgment 
of The Great White Throne is immediately followed by 
the vision of The Consummation of Redemption. 

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out 
of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her 
husband. And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, 
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with 
them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with 
them, and be their God; and he shall wipe away every tear from 
their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be 
mourning nor crying nor pain any more; the first things are 
passed away. 

m 

But more emphatic still, to my own mind at least, is 
the high privilege the Scriptures accord us of a present 
companionship with God. The pure in heart shall now 
see God. The present tense of the supreme promise is 
proved by its context. The Christ is announcing the 
present gifts and benefits of His new spiritual kingdom. 
In the Sermon on the Mount, He ascends His throne and 
dispenses His favors in the manner of many an ancient 



168 The Undying Torch 

king who first promulgates the policy of his reign and 
then pardons, rewards, judges and encourages as he 
pleases. We have called the text " The Supreme 
Promise." It is equally " The Settled Provision " — the 
declaration of spiritual privilege in the kingdom which 
begins, not at death, but at the death of self ; not at the 
life beyond the grave, but at the imparted life of Christ 
given here and now, immediately, to the penitent. 

It is not to be forgotten that the boundaries of the 
kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of darkness parallel 
each other in two worlds, this as well as the next. 

Note that the word " see " used in my text is intended 
to suggest the same tense as the passage in which Moses 
is spoken of as enduring because " seeing Him Who Is 
invisible." 

The whole eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the He- 
brews opens to this key. Its roll of heroes are inscribed 
in high honor because they see, in a world of sin, weak- 
ness, temptation, injustice and bitter persecution, the in- 
visible city, the invisible spectators, the invisible Christ, 
the invisible God. Their whole heroism is in the use of 
their soul's eyes. 

Note the interpreting phrase^: 

" A conviction of things not seen'' 

" He should not see death." 

" What is seen hath not been made of things." 

" Noah warned concerning things not seen as yet." 

" He looked for the city which hath the foundations." 

" ,Not having received but having seen!* 

" He looked unto the recompense of reward." 

" Seeing him who is invisible." 



Attended by the Vision Splendid 169 

" Looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of faith." 

Let us not degenerate into emotionalism. The word 
" see " in our text has to do mainly with clear perception 
and spiritual purpose. But the teaching is gloriously cer- 
tain that the pure in heart shall here and now be privileged 
to have such experiences of God in thought and feeling 
and fellowship that they will be able to speak within the 
truth as they address their own hearts with awe and 
solemnity — " Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of 
hosts ! " To see God is not the reward of purity ; it is 
the accompaniment of purity. 

But there is a searching provision of Christ here. The 
limitation is as real as the privilege. The pure in heart 
shall see God. No others! 

Let us stop here to define two words. " Heart " means 
here more nearly mind than emotion. It indicates a 
central purpose in the life. It does not exclude but in- 
cludes feeling. But it has first and mainly to do with 
motive, with purpose, and with decision. Another Bible 
phrase will help us to understand the function of this 
word — " As a man thinketh in his heart." 

" Pure " is used here and elsewhere in the Book of 
Books to suggest " unalloyed," " clean," " clear " and 
" single." 

With these two definitions in mind we may paraphrase 
the text. Evidently our Lord is saying, " Blessed is the 
man whose central desire, purpose and determination are 
for God — His glory and His will." 

To aid us at this point let us recall four illustrations 
of the word " pure " in the Bible. The term is used of 
mountain or spring water. Not the water of the pools 



170 The Undying Torch 

or the surface or the cisterns, but the steady and abun- 
dant flowing from the limestone ledges. Does thy mind 
and soul thus flow toward God's will as the mountain 
stream seeks the sea? The word is used of unmixed 
oil — oil with all the dirt and twigs taken out and all the 
water beaten out. It is oil that does not sputter, but burns 
steadily. Is thy aspiration for God as steadfast and pure 
as the lambent flame of the beaten oil of the sanctuary? 

The word is used of flawless glass — glass so molten 
as to give back a perfect reflection and so molded that 
when held to the light no check or flaw appears. Is this 
a fit illustration of the mind thou hast for God and His 
glory ? 

The word is used of virgin gold. Generally gold is 
found in strange disguise, black and forbidding, almost 
hopelessly intermingled with fifty times its bulk of inferior 
metal or worthless quartz. Now and then it delights the 
miner to find a nugget of pure gold, free, gleaming, 
priceless. Does God see down in thy heart at this hour 
the virgin metal of a sincere consecration? Search thy 
mind and heart as a miner follows the vein. Findest thou 
in its center a fixed and single purpose, an absorbing 
desire for the will, the Person, and the glory of God? 

Yet it is not the absolutely flawless whom Christ ad- 
dresses or describes in the Sixth Beatitude. If this were 
so, His words would bring an unutterable despair to aspir- 
ing souls. He speaks to those who are profoundly 
conscious, of imperfection, yet move on in a single- 
minded determination, a holy purpose, to know God and 
to serve Him. The message of this Beatitude is not to the 
emotions but to the cleansed and sanctified will. It is true 



Attended by the Vision Splendid 171 

that John the Enraptured saw Christ in Patmos, but it is 
also true that Elijah the Discouraged saw Him in Sinai. 
He who would know the benefit of this Beatitude need not 
search his feelings, but examine his will. Its reward is 
for the man whose will it is to do the will of God — the man 
who is mastered by a clean-cut purpose to serve the Son 
of God. Purity and vision are not sentimental but voli- 
tional. 

Not in dumb resignation do we lift our hands on high, 
Not, like the nerveless fatalist, content to do and die ; 
Our faith springs like the eagle, as it soars to meet the sun, 
And cries exulting unto thee 

O Lord, thy will be done! 

The Church of Christ today, and every man within its 
ranks, needs most of all the real Presence of God. And 
He is here ! " God standeth in the congregation of God." 
At the first Northfield Conference for two hours the 
delegates knelt in prayer without the speaking of a word. 
Out of that clarifying and consecrating of the wills of 
men sprang the Student Volunteer Movement and the 
making of a new epoch in the religious history of the 
globe. " If any man willeth to do His will, he shall 
know/' and he shall see. He shall not only see Him in 
glory, but he shall see Him in power. He shall behold the 
living God at work transforming men. 

Blessed, indeed, are the pure in heart ! 



XII 



Stye m^t Uttl? Soubt 



Christianity is a scientific religion. It uses the method 
of experiment as lavishly as the most ardent chemist or 
biologist could desire. 

While chaplain of the Chicago College of Dental Surgery, 
I went into a class-room in chemistry, or rather into a 
laboratory. Each student had his text-book open and was 
verifying a formula by combining certain chemicals. The 
professor in charge asked me to speak to the class and I 
said to them: 

" You are perfectly illustrating the Christian method of 
salvation. There is a text-book which we call the Bible. 
It contains the formula of salvation, ' Whosoever calleth 
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. If ye seek Me, 
ye shall find Me, if ye search with all your heart.' Let 
us go into the laboratory of prayer and verify these decla- 
rations by throwing our soul upon the Eternal. No man 
ever failed of salvation and religious certainty who used 
his powers of spiritual investigation aright ! " 



®tp> Jtgfji Uttty Saaht 




"And this is the victory that hath overcome the world, 
even our faith. And who is he that overcometh the world 
but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? " — 1 John 
5 : 4, 5. 



HIS is a time of conflict. The realm of re- 
ligious opinion and discussion is full of agi- 
tation. The Christian faith has always had 
unrelenting opposition. Our Lord had 
warned us of this when He said, " I came 
not to bring peace, but a sword." The Christian faith by- 
its uncompromising nature provokes opposition, and it 
must not complain if it has it. But unbelief is more 
powerful today than ever. It is attacking Christianity 
not from without but from within. It tries to creep into 
the fortress and haul down the flag while the defenders 
are manning the walls and looking elsewhere for the 
enemy. As the world becomes more intellectual — and 
happily it is becoming so — it finds new clothes for old 
infidelity. The rise and spread of present-day Ration- 
alism is, after all, only a new clothing of old forms of 
unbelief. 

The blasphemies of the old Infidel Clubs, and the coarse 
attacks upon Christianity that were formerly confined to 
the pool-halls, saloons, and street corners, now find them- 
selves sanctified by pseudoscience and semiphilosophy, 

175 



176 The Undying Torch 

and freely declared in many circles of learning and even 
from the sacred altars of many churches. 

This is a theological age, and it is far more hopeful 
than the one that preceded it. The Church was allowing 
its creeds to lie neglected in its archives. It is now being 
compelled to take them out and subject them to merci- 
less criticism. Cold-beds of formalism always in time 
become hot-beds of rationalism. So the roar of voices in 
the theological forum is a hopeful sound. What will 
the issue be? It will be what it has always been in the 
past, when men have been aroused to consider great 
religious questions. The gospel may be restated, but it 
will, in essence, be vindicated, and men will believe and 
be saved and find the joys of Christian service and the 
foundations of Christian certainty in vastly increased 
numbers. There will be born a nobler Christian literature. 
Many are in the mist now, but we are on rising ground 
and we will come out into the sunlight of faith as cer- 
tainly as the Holy Spirit presides over that ever- victorious 
faith which overcometh the world ! 

We remember the sad words of the brilliant German 
critic, De Wette: 

My days were cast in times of strife, 

When childlike faith was forced to yield; 

I struggled to the end of life. 
Alas, I did not gain the field. 

The great theological battle on in the modern world 
may put an end to what De Wette calls " childlike faith," 
but it will only restore to greater splendor the faith of 
which John speaks — the faith of the New Testament. 
The very word " faith " means conviction upon evidence. 



The Fight Witt Doubt 177 

' ~ " — - | ___ ___________ -_-__-__— 

It is interesting to remember, however, that even De Wette 
in his last years came back to the essential faith of his 
childhood. 

The issue, therefore, is not in doubt, but the thing that 
concerns me is the young men and young women who 
will suffer in this time of transition. I pray God that I 
may say some word that will help them in the fight with 
doubt. 

This is no time for religious leaders to be somnolent. 
Henry Van Dyke in " The Gospel For an Age of Doubt " 
has well remarked: 

" The sign of this age is a question-mark rampant above 
three bishops dormant." 

II 

1. What are the muses of religious doubt today? One 
cause of religious uncertainty is the prevalence of a shal- 
low education. " A little learning tendeth to infidelity," 
remarked Lord Bacon ; " more learning tendeth to faith." 
This is particularly true of science. The devil has made a 
desperate attempt to marshal the sciences one by one 
against the Christian faith. Going back over the past 
twenty-five years we can note this attempt to assault the 
citadel of Christ by taking advantage under the disguise 
of a false science. 

There was the attempt to use astronomy to discredit the 
Bible and the Christian faith. We were told there was 
no reconciliation between the facts of the sky and the 
assertions of our faith. It is true, as Dr. Wilbur W. 
White has said, that " The Bible is so busy telling men 
how to go to heaven that it does not stop to tell us how 



178 The Undying Torch 

the heavens go." The Bible is not a text-book on astron- 
omy. But my own experience has been this ; the more I 
have dipped into astronomy and then examined the pas- 
sages in the Bible which touch the borders of this science, 
the more remarkable the Bible has seemed to me. Is it not 
amusing to have men cavil, for instance, at the story of 
Joshua whose prayer lengthened out the day, when we 
discover in the study of astronomy that God performs a 
similar miracle every night; that an hour after the sun 
has actually " set " below the horizon, it is still visible, 
glowing in the heavens ? A mere matter of refraction, say 
the scientists. Well, if God can work the sun overtime an 
hour every night, there is no sufficient reason why He 
could not work it a little longer on that historic occasion ! 
When we take an honest look, however, at the passage we 
will probably laugh at ourselves heartily for thinking that 
it even raised a question in astronomy. I would that all 
modern astronomers had the same sense of wonder and 
reverence when they gaze into the heavens and measure the 
density of stars and speculate about the new nebular " uni- 
verses," as the writers of the Holy Word had. After all, 
the best time to read Job and Genesis and Amos and the 
Psalms is after you have spent a night on the top of Mt. 
Wilson looking through the sixty-inch telescope. " The 
stars in their courses " may " fight against Sisera," but 
they do not fight against the inspired men of the Book. 

The next science to be misused was geology. I sup- 
pose there always will be discussions on Genesis and Ge- 
ology, and there will be many victims of these discussions. 
Some will react into unbelief and think they are doing it 
in loyalty to science. Others will feel that loyalty to the 



The Fight With Doubt 179 

Bible demands that they shall mock at the records in the 
rocks. May God deliver us from both kinds of folly ! 

Let us look seriously at the stars and curiously and 
carefully through the many-leaved volume of the earth's 
crust, and then read with astonishment that great Hymn 
to Creation in the first chapter of Genesis, in which the 
findings of modern geology are so surprisingly anticipated 
by the ancient Seer who never had the privilege and 
delight of modern scientific study, but who evidently was 
big-minded and big-hearted enough to have welcomed 
such study with thanksgivings to Almighty God. 

If geology shall make necessary reinterpretations of 
Biblical passages, let us make those changes in our think- 
ing with great alacrity. The God of the Bible is the God 
of Science. 

Then infidelity endeavored to use the new psychology 
to assault the Christian faith. The attempt was made to 
explain the supernatural experiences of conversion and 
salvation by psychology. Many books were issued on 
" Religious Psychology." We were shown that our sup- 
posedly spiritual experiences were explainable on natural- 
istic grounds. A revival was " mob psychology " ; a con- 
version was a " mental and emotional crisis " ; the church 
obtained its great results by " hypnotic methods." 

The best answer to this movement was one given by 
William James, America's most noted psychologist, in his 
volume entitled " Varieties of Religious Experience. " In 
this he gave a study of the religious experiences of a 
selected group. It was a serious attempt to get at the 
secret of their transformation. Some of you will re- 
member his conclusion. In substance it was this : There is 



180 The Undying Torch 

something more than mental suggestion to be predicated 
as an explanation of these profound experiences of the 
soul. Something comes from without into the life! 

Then Harold Begbie made his famous study of the con- 
versions of a group of human wrecks in the East End of 
London ; a careful, almost microscopic research into the 
changed lives of one little Salvation Army post. He pub- 
lished his fascinating book in England under the title, 
" Broken Earthenware." In America the volume was pub- 
lished under the name of " Twice-Born Men." Begbie 
dedicated this book to William James and sent to the 
famous American a letter, saying that he considered his 
book but a foot-note to Prof. James' " Varieties of Relig- 
ious Experience." With the candor and courtesy which 
always distinguished him, Prof. James declared that his 
book might better be considered a foot-note to Begbie's 
book, " For," said he, " you have gone farther into this 
matter than I have." How much farther had Begbie gone? 
James had discovered through the use of his science that 
there was something in conversion which could not be 
explained by any known mental laws. There was a mys- 
terious element before which he stood back in reverence. 
Begbie went farther and declared that this mysterious 
something was a Divine Person — Jesus Christ, the Son 
of God! 

Today religious psychology is being harnessed to Chris- 
tian education. It has become the hand-maid and not the 
opponent of the Bible. 

Infidelity had hoped, too, for help from archeology, but 
here it was disappointed from the very beginning of this 
new and fascinating department of science. It is difficult 



The Fight With Doubt 181 

to find an archaeologist in the Anglo-Saxon world who 
has not found remarkable confirmation of the authenticity 
and truth of the Bible records from his work in Bible 
lands. " The spade of the antiquarian/' declared Principal 
Fairbairn of Oxford, " has demolished the work of the 
destructive critic." Not only the men who have led the 
expeditions to Nineveh and Jerusalem and Babylon and 
Asia Minor and the Valley of the Nile and Persia, but 
the scholars, who have given the best years of their life to 
the systematizing of the information concerning the 
ancient world thus obtained, have become increasingly 
men of faith. 

When a boy I found it hard to believe that there ever 
were such people as Hivites and Jebusites and Girgashites 
and Hittites. I always had the sneaking feeling that the 
old records were romancing. But now the dry bones live, 
and the archaeologist and antiquarian have furnished us 
with a dramatic background of ancient peoples against 
which we see in finer relief the history of the Old Testa- 
ment. 

The new emphasis on sociology also gave a fresh oc- 
casion to infidelity. The science of society, and the rela- 
tionships of man with man, was hailed by those who hated 
the Christian faith as a substitute for the old insistence 
upon religious faith and personal regeneration. Sociology 
was to take the place of salvation. Service to humanity 
was to supplant devotion to Christ. This sounded very 
well, but it could not stand the scientific test. Charles 
Stelzle, that Christian friend and adviser of the Labor 
Union movement of America, made a careful survey of 
the excellent social settlements in New York City. He 



182 The Undying Torch 

found, of course, what we all might have suspected ; that 
the efficiency of these organizations depended upon the 
Christian faith. That between sixty and seventy per cent, 
of all the social service workers in Greater New York 
were members of evangelical churches. This is the more 
astonishing when we remember that the percentage of 
evangelical church-members in that city is smaller than 
either the Catholic or Jewish populations. It is the Chris- 
tian faith and the transformed life of the regenerated soul 
which have contributed the working staff of our humani- 
tarian enterprises, and it is only in the spirit of Christ that 
we shall overcome the injustice, the inequality, and the 
maladministration of the present faulty social order. 

You cannot make buildings without bricks, and you can- 
not build an ideal state without ideal citizens. Christianity 
must furnish unselfish leadership to a selfish world, and it 
must also attack by its evangelistic power the basic selfish- 
ness of the individual. 

At the present hour the popular science for the devil's 
use is biology. Don't misunderstand. The teachers of 
biology in America today are mainly Christian teachers, 
and the science itself is a noble science. But a desperate 
attempt has been made by the misuse of this science to 
attack the great Christian teachings concerning the origin 
of life. Men would hesitate today to endorse the words 
of the great English Agnostic who tried to think that the 
origin of life was due to " a fortuitous concourse of 
atoms," but the general tendency has been to lead the stu- 
dent to feel that the mystery of life was being solved, and 
that it was not necessary to predicate God — in fact, that 
man himself might soon be in the creation business and 



The Fight With Doubt 183 

evoke life from non-living matter. To borrow the words 
of a misguided French thinker of another generation, the 
devil has been misusing biology in the attempt to " con- 
duct God to the frontier and bow him out ! " 

But this insanity will pass. The eager pursuit of a new 
department of science is usually accompanied by an undue 
conceit, and the hour is coming when every speck of life 
will fill us with reverence and not with unbelief. Science 
itself will laugh the materialistic evolutionist out of the 
classroom. Notice that I do not say that the evolution- 
ary theory will be speedily demolished. I am not here 
quarreling with the creative evolutionist; the man who 
starts with God and ends with God, and who believes that 
evolution by " resident forces " means that God Himself 
is in the process and conducting it through to its end. 
Many men of this type have been great Christians and 
splendid Christian leaders. The vital thing to retain is 
that life is from the Throne of the Eternal 

To study the flow of the ramifying rivulets of life and 
never lift our eyes to the fountain from which they de- 
scend is not only to stultify the soul; it is to assassinate 
the mind. 

And let no one feel that evidence will ever be brought 
before us that God ever made a half man or a quarter 
man, with a half soul or an incomplete conscience, to 
struggle through the mists of the primitive world, feeling 
desperately after a God Whom he could not reach. There 
has never been the slightest scintilla of evidence that the 
Almighty has ever practised His hand upon such mon- 
strosities. Heart-breaking as man's life is in some of its 
aspects, and mysterious as the meaning of much of his 



184 The Undying Torch 

H I I II. I II ■ II I .1 HH -l.llllll III. ■ ■!■ II I II I 11 II 1 . I ■■ 

suffering and misery must remain, there is no such 
monster in the whole scale of creation as these half-beast- 
half-man fancies which educated infidels have prostituted 
their minds to produce ! 

The attempt to ally biology with a false anthropology 
to discredit the great Christian doctrine of creation will 
of course fail, for all fads of thought which contain within 
themselves a vitiating falsehood are in the end exposed 
and discarded. 

2. A shallow education in the realm of science is the 
prolific source of religious doubt. Another source of 
doubt is ignorance of the Bible. What the world needs is 
more science and more Bible. I have been troubled by 
visiting some of our colleges and universities, to find that 
not more than thirty per cent, of the students are special- 
izing in science, but I am more troubled still when I find 
that even in our Christian colleges so little emphasis is 
given to the teaching of the Bible. In fact, the Christian 
student goes to a Christian college and frequently finds he 
can get no scholastic credit for the study of the Bible. It 
is rather amusing to hear so much said about " the conflict 
between the Bible and Science " when the modern young 
American knows little of science and less of the Bible. 
How can things conflict that do not exist? And in the 
churches and Sunday schools Bible knowledge is often 
imparted in a haphazard and desultory fashion. 

A hundred years ago the American student could 
choose between study of the Bible and the study of per- 
haps forty or fifty other books. Today he must pursue his 
Bible study while uncounted thousands of books and 
pamphlets and magazines and newspapers are clamoring 



The Fight With Doubt 185 

for his attention. The Christian church is beginning to 
arouse itself in an attempt to recapture the attention of 
the youth of the country in the systematic teaching of the 
fundamentals of the Christian faith. A man who is 
ignorant of the Bible falls an easy victim to superficial 
infidelity. The cure for this type of doubt is more study 
of the Holy Scriptures. 

The eccentric John Randolph of Roanoke had an ex- 
tensive library. A friend, upon visiting it, noticed a 
peculiar arrangement on one of the shelves. In the center 
of this shelf there was a large Bible; flanking this Bible 
on the one side were many volumes of Christian comment 
and exposition. On the other hand were arranged an 
equal number of rationalistic and infidel publications. 
" Why have you arranged your books in this fashion ?" 
asked the visitor, " I was much concerned some years 
ago," responded Randolph, " as to whether or not the 
Bible was more than a human book. So I read widely 
on both sides of the question and also read the Bible itself 
with great care and attention." " And what was your 
conclusion?" inquired the friend. John Randolph drew 
himself up and said impressively, " My conclusion was 
that a mole could as easily have written Sir Isaac New- 
ton's Treatise on Optics as uninspired men the Bible." 

Young man, you say you do not believe in the Bible? 
Have you honestly and thoroughly studied it? Buy a 
copy with good print and spend your evenings with it 
for a while. Mark the things you do not like, if you wish ; 
but with equal care underline the great and ennobling 
passages that thrill your soul. Your doubts may be the 
product of your ignorance. 



186 The Undying Torch 

3. Sin is another source of religious doubt. " Tell me 
what kind of a life a man lives," said Fichte, " and I will 
tell you what kind of a philosophy he will adopt." We 
have been talking about Bible study. Let us not forget 
what the old scholar Bengel said : " This Book will keep 
you from sin, or sin will keep you from this Book." 

What man can seek truth with an undivided heart 
whose life is weakened by sinful indulgence? Many a man 
with whom I have conversed on the matter of religious 
doubt has revealed to me that his great life problem was 
the overcoming of moral evil, and when he had ad- 
dressed himself to the solving of the questions of conduct 
and character he found his religious doubts evaporating. 

Young people, ask yourselves candidly the question: 
" Is my religious uncertainty intellectual or is it an un- 
certainty which naturally springs from my disregard of 
the statutes of God? Do I not react from the Bible 
because the Bible is trying to be faithful to my soul? " 

There is a Venezuelan proverb, " Beware of the man 
whose mask you have lifted." Are you not shunning 
Christ and the Bible because Christ and His Word strip 
the mask from your life? One way to kill doubt is to 
flee from sin. 

4. And now we turn to an entirely different thought. 
Some men lose their faith because of their unwillingness 
to part with their sins, but there are others who have lost 
faith because of trouble and discouragement. Circum- 
stances have beaten them. Disaster has overtaken them. 
Bereavement has broken their hearts. They have been 
deadened by despair, and the flower of their faith has 
been trampled into the mire of misery. I beseech all such 



The Fight With Doubt 187 

who have lost both the treasures of life and the treasure 
of faith — do not flee from God, but fly to Him! The 
only way to escape from God is to run toward Him. 

When I was a lad, a boy friend confided to me that he 
had found a way to escape the wrath of his father. He 
said : " You know father always goes into the barn and 
gets the buggy-whip when he punishes me. I have found 
that the way to do is to get close to him and hold onto his 
legs. Then he can't get a chance at me." I often think 
of what Ned told me when I see men trying to get away 
from the lash of circumstances by walking into the 
scorpion's nest of infidelity. Dear and burdened heart, 
take thyself to thy God. Reach out and touch the seam- 
less robe of Christ, and comfort and healing and com- 
passion will be thy portion ! 

5. The greatest source of infidelity is found in the care- 
less living of professed Christians, No man has a right to 
use another man's weakness as an excuse for infidelity. 
Every man shall give an account of himself to God. But 
multitudes of men are using the failures of the " house- 
hold of faith " as an excuse for their own religious indif- 
ference. We need higher standards of living in the church 
today. The average of conduct and devotion is danger- 
ously low. The world, the flesh, and the devil have too 
much influence even amongst Christian leaders. One 
conspicuously bad spot in a Christian leader's life will 
draw more attention than all the virtues he has accumu- 
lated in a lifetime of service. One button gone from a 
good coat gets the attention of all. One broken window 
on the street causes more comment than all the perfect 
windows. The Christian profession is a white back- 



188 The Undying Torch 

ground against which the sins of the churchman are the 
more conspicuously placarded. 

I once saw a painting of " The Brazen Serpent." You 
will remember the story. Israel was plagued by poison- 
ous serpents. Jehovah directed Moses to erect a brazen 
serpent upon a pole in the midst of the camp. The light 
of the desert sun, blazing upon that brazen serpent, could 
be seen throughout the vast encampment. Stricken 
Israelites could look at that shining light and be healed. 
The artist had depicted a woman drooping to the ground, 
endeavoring to look at the brazen serpent. Before her, 
and between her and that life-giving sight, stood a man 
with a handful of gems which he had looted from the 
panic-stricken host. He was trying to call her attention 
to these shining baubles, while she was exerting her fail- 
ing strength to see the heaven-given light. So vividly had 
the artist done his work that you felt like stepping into 
the canvas and thrusting the man aside. " Let her look 
and live ! " you felt like crying. " You are in her way ! " 

So the Christian with his inconsistencies draws away 
the attention of a dying world, and Christ's heaven-sent 
salvation is neglected. In the fight with doubt let the 
church herself raise her standards and justify her faith 
by her works. 

Ill 

And now let me give some practical suggestions to 
doubters. We have been talking about causes; now let 
us talk about cures. 

1. To those who are honest doubters of the Christian 
faith, let me first of all say, "Doubt your doubts, and 



The Fight With Doubt 189 

believe your beliefs/' This advice was given to me years 
ago. I do not know its source, but I hand it on to you. 
Don't believe your doubts and doubt your beliefs. A 
doubt is a dubious thing. Do not give it too high a rank 
in your thinking. Let it have its due weight and no more. 
The positive in life outranks the negative, and the positive 
in life is far more apt to be true than the negative. 

2. And then note this. Remember the difficulties of 
doubt are greater than the problems of faith. You do not 
escape from questions when you throw aside your Chris- 
tian faith. You increase the number of your questions. 
When you have laid aside the infallible Christ and the 
inspired Bible, you have made the universe a riddle. You 
have thrown away the key to that riddle. The Christian 
faith does present many things difficult to grasp and 
other matters that are unsolvable, but there are a thousand 
terrifying questions which stalk through the mind of the 
infidel, the atheist, and the agnostic. Infidelity wrenches 
the mind. It is a type of insanity. Normal thinking 
always predicates God. Reason is on the side of the Re- 
deemer. " I am the way, the truth and the life/* He 
declared ; and the experience of the ages has substantiated 
His declaration. So remember this before you take the 
plunge. You are leaving some intellectual difficulties but 
you are embracing worse problems and greater difficulties ! 

3. Remember, too, that your religion has already met 
every possible test. There is no new thing in infidelity. 
Every argument against Christ and the Bible has been 
answ r ered by past generations of Christian apologists. 

While Chaplain of a college in Chicago, a committee of 
young men waited upon me in my study. They told me 
o 



190 The Undying Torch 

they had come to the point where they could no longer 
believe in the Christian faith. They said : " Chaplain, we 
have not come to this position through any reading or 
study. The objections we have to Christianity we have 
thought out ourselves. They are the product of our own 
minds." I asked them to state their objections to the 
Christian faith and they freely did so. I then reached 
down a book from my library shelves, opened the volume 
and said, " Here are your objections to the Christian faith 
in print, objections almost as old as Christianity itself, and 
printed beneath your objections you will find the answers 
of the Christian Church." They read with amazement a 
better statement of their unbelief than they themselves 
could make, and with profound attention the compre- 
hensive answers given! No, there is nothing new in 
infidelity. Christianity has been tested at every possible 
point and proved true. We know well that Christ is what 
He claimed to be; our Bible has never failed us in our 
time of need; our salvation is real. The service of the 
Son of God makes life worth living. Death itself has 
no terror for the Christian. Misfortune, sorrow, disap- 
pointment, disease, and all the mysteries of life are meek 
servants of the Christian faith. Your doubt has the moss 
of centuries upon it, and the Christian faith has long ago 
made a sufficient answer to your every question. 

4. Welcome what light you can get. I will give you a 
clue tonight, for I want you to use the scientific method 
in solving your doubts. I declare that I have mined in 
the mine of truth and found a nugget. Go to that same 
vein and test it! I have experimented in the spiritual 
laboratory of prayer. I have thrown my soul out into the 



The Fight With Doubt 191 

spiritual unknown, and I have found there the reality 
of the fact of Christ! The method of science is to test 
the formula by experimentation. Yes, and more than 
that, the method of science is to build up new formulae 
by original experimentation. Science sneers at no fact. 
Every regenerated Christian man is a fact, substantiating 
the formula, " If ye seek me, ye shall find me when ye 
search with all your heart." 

5. Use what faith you have! Many of you have far 
more faith than you think. A young man came to Presi- 
dent Finney of Oberlin College many years ago and said, 
" President Finney, I have lost my faith in God, the 
Bible and the supernatural." President Finney said, 
" What do you believe? " " I don't seem to believe any- 
thing." The president handed him a piece of paper and 
said, " Go home and in the quiet of your room, sit down 
and write out what you do believe." " But," protested 
the student, " I wouldn't know where to begin." " Well, 
do you believe your mother loves you?" "Why, cer- 
tainly I believe that." " Well, that is something construc- 
tive. Write that down first, and then go on. You will 
find you have a long creed." The young man used this 
method and found he had a lot of faith, and when he 
used that faith he obtained more faith and came through 
to the Christian positions. 

A woman introduced in Scotland in a religious con- 
vention as " a woman of great faith," said, " No, I am 
not a woman of great faith. I am only a woman of a 
little faith in a great God." 

Search in your hearts. Use what faith you have to 
start with. Don't try to work up faith. The way to have 



192 The Undying Torch 

faith in a man is by getting to know that man better. If 
he is a good man, your faith will increase. The way to 
have faith in Christ is to know Him. When you know 
Him, faith takes care of itself! Urge your soul into fel- 
lowship with Christ. 

Years ago Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, the noted agnos- 
tic, was lecturing at McVicar's Theater in Chicago, on the 
subject "What Must I Do to be Saved?" A band of 
Christian young men determined they would hand to his 
hearers, as they came out of the theater, copies of a 
pamphlet entitled " The Conversion of Elijah P. Brown." 
I was one of that band and I asked the newsboys who 
were selling Ingersoll's lecture on " The Mistakes of 
Moses " in the theater lobby to place one of our pamphlets 
within the leaves of each of Ingersoll's lectures. This 
they very cheerfully did. Why were we so anxious that 
Ingersoll's audience should read this pamphlet? 

Elijah P. Brown had started out in life as an agnostic. 
He patterned himself upon Robert Ingersoll and had a 
very handsome portrait of his hero above his mantelpiece 
in his Indiana home. He lectured frequently on " Agnos- 
ticism." Nothing was farther from his thought than to 
become a Christian. He possessed an exceptionally in- 
cisive and brilliant intellect. One day in Chicago Mr. 
Brown was handed a newspaper containing the announce- 
ment that Dwight L. Moody was to speak that night at 
the Chicago Avenue Church. He said to himself, " I don't 
believe in that man's gospel, but I may get some pointers 
on how to handle a crowd." He went to hear Moody. 
The service started with a half-hour of singing under the 
leadership of Mr. Sankey. Brown sat scornfully in his 



The Fight With Doubt 193 

seat. " It's just as I anticipated — music and emotion ! " 
Then Mr. Moody arose and preached on the Prodigal 
Son, one of the most hackneyed subjects in the Bible. He 
had not been speaking ten minutes before Brown was 
saying to himself : " That man is sincere and he is honestly 
trying to help us all. I don't believe him but I believe in 
him/' At the close of the address, those interested were in- 
vited to go into an " inquiry room " to talk with Mr. 
Moody and other workers about the Christian life. Brown 
had become so interested in Moody's personality that he 
went in. A Christian worker approached him with an open 
Bible. He felt insulted. " Shut up your Bible/' he said, 
" I don't believe a word of it. I came here to see Mr. 
Moody." 

Mrs. Moody approached him with her Bible in hand. 
She saw his reaction toward the open Bible, however, and 
closed her own and said, " If you will wait until Mr. 
Moody is through with the others, he will be glad to con- 
verse with you." When all were gone it was late, but 
Mr. Moody came over and said : " Come over to the hotel 
and see me tomorrow. We will have a good chance to talk 
there." Brown accepted the invitation. The result was 
that he spent two weeks in Chicago, holding several con- 
ferences with Mr. Moody about his religious belief. At the 
end of the two weeks he found himself not only able but 
compelled of conscience to accept Jesus Christ as Lord 
and Saviour. He said of his experience afterward : " God 
led me very gently. It was a long time before I came to 
see that even the Old Testament was part of the Word of 
God, but I did at once find peace through faith in Jesus 
Christ." 



194 The Undying Torch 

He went home to Indiana, took down the portrait of 
Ingersoll and put it in the closet, face to the wall. He 
became immediately known as an active Christian man. 
He founded the well-known reform and temperance 
journal, " The Ram's Horn/' and for many years through 
his department, " Figs and Thistles," stimulated the 
consciences, provoked the humor and stirred the souls of 
men. 

On the very night when we handed out these pamphlets 
to Ingersoll's audience, we found it necessary to wait for 
the speaker to complete his lecture. We left our literature 
in the lobby of the Inter-Ocean Building, and went over 
to the Pacific Garden Mission. As we came into the hall 
a man of fine appearance was speaking. He was saying : 
" For six months I reported Ingersoll's lectures on agnos- 
ticism. I had adopted his religious views. Later I be- 
came addicted to the gambling mania. I lost my position, 
my friends, and my courage. I came here to Chicago 
early this winter in desperate need. All doors were closed 
to me. One bitter night I went out on the Madison Street 
bridge over the Chicago River, looked down at the icy 
stream and said, ' There is no room for me in Chicago, 
but there is room for me in the Chicago River/ I started 
to climb up over the rail in order to drop down into the 
water, when a policeman who had been watching me, 
caught me by my ragged coat and pulled me back. ' What 
are you trying to do ? ' he said. I bluntly confessed. 
' You may stop me now, but I have made up mind to 
commit suicide and I will do so.' The policeman was a 
Christian man. He said : ' I know what you want. You 
are cold and hungry/ He took me by the arm and 



The Fight With Doubt 195 

marched me to the Pacific Garden Mission, this very 
place. They took me in, and gave me food, a place to 
sleep and clothing to wear, and then * Mother Clarke ' led 
me to Christ. I am serving that Saviour today. I am 
on the staff of the Inter-Ocean. I sent to Denver for my 
family and they are with me. My lot is a happy one, and 
my future is bright ! " 

O young men and young women, I beg of you to grap- 
ple with your doubts. Do not allow them to fill your life 
with paralyzing uncertainty concerning Christ and His 
blessed Word. Use the powers both of reason and of 
prayer to preserve within yourself and for the benefit of 
the world your trustful confidence in the glorious Re- 
deemer. 

" Who is he that overcometh the world but he that 
believeth that Jesus is the Son of God ! " 



XIII 

Wqt learnt of {fear* 



Fifty-one years ago the far-stretching Spanish ranch of 
San Pasquale witnessed the founding of Pasadena by a 
colony from Indiana. God-fearing people were these pil- 
grims from the far East. Their first Sunday in a strange 
land was marked by an open-air service held in the name 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, near the site of the present 
edifice of the First Presbyterian Church of Pasadena. 
The seeds of Presbyterianism were brought across the 
desert by the Indiana Colony. 

As the new settlement grew other evangelical bodies 
organized and builded habitations for themselves. The 
First Baptist Church of Pasadena was founded in 1883. 
The Rev. Mr. Latourette, a missionary of The American 
Baptist Publication Society, organized a Bible school, and 
on the seventh of November the church itself was consti- 
tuted, temporarily sheltered in what was then called Good 
Templars Hall. 

Dr. O. P. Giff ord in his " Foreword " outlines the growth 
of the organization, — the church which has become noted 
for its abounding liberality toward the modern missionary 
movement. 

Dr. Dean's sermon, "The House of Peace," was the 
initial message delivered from the pulpit of the great new 
edifice just completed. 




3tye if ami? xd ^mtt 

" And in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah of hosts." 
— Haggai 2 : 9. 

ENRY CLAY TRUMBULL, that cour- 
ageous and keen son of old Connecticut, has 
put the world into his debt not only by the 
*^§^} living of a noble life, but by the crystalliza- 
tion of his wit, his wisdom, his experience, 
and his faith, in some thirty-odd volumes covering a 
remarkable range of Christian thought and feeling. His 
books are the sort that fascinate by their clarity and 
sanity and by an unfailing human touch. One of Doctor 
Trumbull's books deals with his experiences as chaplain 
of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment during the American 
Civil War. He states that it was his custom to seek in 
the Old Testament for situations similar to those in 
which the regiment found itself. He then carefully pre- 
pared a written message based upon the Old Testament 
narratives, applying them to the duties of the hour. 

It is a far cry from ancient Israel to modern America, 
but the Tenth Connecticut took the keenest interest in the 
timeless principles that their chaplain discovered and 
utilized for their inspiration. 

The Old Testament is indispensable. It is the one 
great classic in which we may always find an illuminating 
parable of modern conditions. The kaleidoscopic changes 
taking place in California today find an adequate inter- 

199 



200 The Undying Torch 

pretation in the ancient records of the Jewish historians 
and prophets. 

This homiletical reliability of the Old Testament ex- 
plains our recourse to the Prophet Haggai at this im- 
portant juncture in our church life. We have worked 
hard. There have been not a few sacrifices. Not months 
but years have passed since we first visioned the building 
of this temple. Not a few of those who helped lay the 
foundations of this noble enterprise are missing as we 
meet today for the first formal occasion of worship and 
dedication in this completed house. 

So great an hour demands a noble utterance ; an utter- 
ance, too, born of similar circumstances. How fitting to 
this sacred hour are the words of the divine message 
through the lips of Haggai, "In this place will I give 
peace, saith Jehovah of hosts." 

It is a temptation for us to use a more ample quotation : 
" I will fill this house with glory, saith Jehovah of hosts. 
The silver is mine and the gold is mine, saith Jehovah of 
hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than 
the former, saith Jehovah of hosts ; and in this place will 
I give peace, saith Jehovah of hosts." 

Had we fashioned these words to fit our circumstances 
we could not have bettered them. Even so, they are too 
many for us, and we shall have to give our chief attention 
to the concluding clause, " and in this place will I give 
peace, saith Jehovah of hosts." 

For seventy years Israel had dwelt in the land of cap- 
tivity ; alien and despised colonists on a foreign soil, their 
ancient city and temple a wilderness of blackened ruins in- 
habited only by the scorpion and the jackal. Then came 



The House of Peace 201 

the golden proclamation of Cyrus, not only permitting 
but directing the people of God to restore their temple and 
its worship and reoccupy their land. A son of David, 
Zerubbabel by name, eagerly leads his caravan of fifty 
thousand souls from Persia to Jerusalem. It was a diffi- 
cult task to organize and lead this expedition. Four long 
months it took them to travel the seven hundred miles 
which stretched between the city of Babylon and Zion. 
They took a year to root themselves into the country and 
then began to rebuild the temple. Then came the jealous 
interference of the Samaritans who used their influence 
with the Persian government to halt the hopeful enter- 
prise. 

The story of these intrigues is a long one — a chapter 
full of bitterness and petty hatred. For fifteen years the 
unfinished temple discouraged the restored Israel. Then 
came favorable political developments. Darius Hystaspes 
ascends the Persian throne. Quick to seize the oppor- 
tunity, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah demand that 
their countrymen resume the sacred work. Crops had 
been poor ; a recent drought had brought the colony near 
to starvation ; a famine threatens ; but these facts are only 
used as texts upon which these ancient seers elaborate as 
they passionately demand that the temple be completed. 
Zerubbabel, who has remained as the Persian governor of 
the province, responds to their appeal. Our text consti- 
tutes an utterance of Haggai a month after the work has 
been resumed. Just enough time has elapsed to permit 
discouragement and weariness to make themselves felt, 
and in the hearts of the builders the question could not 
help but ever be present, " Why rebuild this temple when 



202 The Undying Torch 

we are ringed about by enemies? When war threatens 
over the rim of every horizon, north, south, and east ? " 
It is for this reason that the prophet declares " In this 
place will I give peace." 



I would first remind you that there is an outward peace 
for the people of God. It is the peace of circumstance, of 
favorable environment. There is the outward peace of a 
favoring Providence. 

The terrible and disastrous entanglement of Israel in 
the Egyptian and Assyrian wars was a thing of the past. 
Even the machinations of their hostile neighbors, the 
Samaritans, had now been negatived. Decimated Israel 
could lift up its head amongst the peoples of the earth. 
God had granted to it the gift of restored political privi- 
lege and He had also granted in His good providence the 
restoration of religious liberty — the privilege of worship, 
of building their temple as an expression of their faith 
and of publicly proclaiming that faith so passionately dear 
to their hearts. Poor though they were, they ordered rafts 
of cedar logs from Lebanon to be floated down to Joppa 
and then brought them laboriously overland to the moun- 
tain capital, Jerusalem. Though a mere handful, they 
dared to throw the fagade of their temple ninety feet into 
the air. They richly decorated the interior with gold. 
They reorganized their ritual and broke forth into sing- 
ing and, best of all, they rebuilt their temple upon the old 
and consecrated foundations. No nation on earth seemed 
less likely to be restored to its land and take its place 
once more amongst the sovereignties of earth. It was a 



The House of Peace 203 

miracle of history. They were under the unmistakable 
aegis of a favoring Providence. War and distraction had 
given way to peace and unity; once more there stretched 
before the feet of Israel the shining pathway of a free 
faith and a free opportunity of worship and service. How 
blest and privileged were these men of old Judea ! 

But we, who as modern Baptists worship in this new 
temple today, are equally under the beneficence of a favor- 
ing Providence. We too hear a voice saying to us, " In 
this place will I give peace," and as we hear the word 
" peace," we are solemnly reminded of our times of exile, 
of captivity and of bitter warfare. We are the privileged 
children of Baptist pioneers whose scars were many and 
whose strife was incessant. Baptists have a greater name 
than Israel. The captivity of the Jews came as a proper 
punishment for the faithlessness of the Jews. Their 
idolatries betrayed them. The sufferings of our Baptist 
forefathers were undeserved sufferings, endured for the 
sake of obtaining for their children larger liberties. It 
is through their human instrumentality that God has 
granted to us this day a House oi Peace. We would be 
recreant if we did not celebrate their noble fame and 
acknowledge our profound obligation. 

There is an utterance of the Prophet Isaiah which is 
often misunderstood. " Harken to me, ye that follow 
after righteousness, ye that seek Jehovah ; look unto the 
rock whence ye were hewn and to the hole of the pit 
whence ye were digged." Too often we stop our quota- 
tion at this point, believing that the prophet has instructed 
us to look down into the depth of sin from which we were 
delivered, the pit of iniquity from which we were lifted. 



204 The Undying Torch 

Alas, this destroys the meaning of the passage. Read on 
and you will see what the prophet meant. " Look unto 
Abraham your father, and to Sarah that bare you " ! The 
prophet in other words is demanding that we look into the 
human quarry from which we received our faith. Our 
Baptist pioneers were, like Abraham, rugged, rocklike 
men. It is well that we should look back to these men of 
granite, these women of endurance who were the founders 
of our faith. 

1. These Baptist pioneers won for us the peace of a free 
faith. Christians of many communions have blest the 
world by the contribution of their devotion and culture, 
but to quote the words of Bancroft, the historian : " Free- 
dom of conscience, unlimited freedom of mind, was from 
the first the trophy of the Baptists." 

The old-time Baptists were fond of the term, " soul 
liberty." It was a battle cry of Baptists of other days. 
What did they mean by it? They meant that a man's 
soul should be free to worship God according to his own 
convictions. A simple thing, but still lacking in some 
parts of the world, and only obtained for the rest of the 
world by appalling sacrifices. On one occasion Lord 
Chancellor King of Great Britain attempted to praise Mr. 
John Locke, speaking of him as the author of soul-liberty 
— the right of a man to be unhindered by the State or the 
Church in the expression of his private faith, but honest 
John Locke refused the honor of the compliment, declar- 
ing that the Baptists were the first and only propounders 
of absolute liberty, equal and impartial. 

Baptists have their beliefs, and some of them are stern 
and rigid, as truth is apt to be; but one of their beliefs 



The House of Peace 205 

is that there must be no coercion of any man's faith. A 
man has the natural right to entire freedom of mind in 
making his choice of religion. Even today we need to 
be careful at this point. Cardinal Gibbons said some few 
years since, "A man enjoys religious liberty when he 
possesses the free right of worshiping God according to 
the dictates of a right conscience, and of practising a form 
of religion most in accordance with his duties to God." 
But this is not religious liberty at all! This definition 
makes room for bigoted coercion of the consciences of 
men. Who shall determine what " a right conscience " is ? 
The Baptist believes in genuine religious liberty. He makes 
the individual the judge of a " right " conscience ! In 
the past he has been bitterly persecuted on account of his 
faith. A multitude of Baptists were tortured by the 
Inquisition, operated by men who believed they had a 
right to coerce a man's conscience and dictate to him his 
beliefs. The Baptist has a long memory. 

Dr. Thomas J. Villers reminds us that " in 1535 Charles 
V, the sovereign lord of the Netherlands, issued an edict 
commanding that all ' re-baptizers ' be put to death by fire. 
If a man repented of his new faith, he was so far forgiven 
as to be beheaded. If a penitent woman confessed her 
error, she was tenderly spared the flames and was buried 
alive. By 1546 the number of these Baptist martyrs had 
reached the awful total of thirty thousand. Philip II 
continued his father's butchery. Duke Alva, the new 
king's chief adviser, urged that these ' Dutch men of but- 
ter ' could be ruled only by the sword. Give him an army, 
and he would pour into the royal coffers a stream of 
treasure a yard deep. Within three months after reaching 
P 



206 The Undying Torch 

the Netherlands he had taken eighteen hundred lives. 
Then, growing weary of such insignificant work as sen- 
tencing individuals, his Council of Blood with one fell 
swoop sentenced to death the entire population, three 
millions of people ! Trees and scaffolds by the roadsides 
were everywhere hung with the dead. Alva boasted that 
in addition to those whose death he had caused in battle, 
siege, and massacre, he had executed eighteen thousand 
six hundred heretics ! " 

Protestant rulers as well as Catholic were often the 
bitter persecutors of the Baptists. Queen Elizabeth 
ordered all Baptists from England, threatening them with 
imprisonment and confiscation of property. Stout Hugh 
Latimer, who was himself to die a martyr's death, in 
preaching before King Edward VI on March 29, 1549, 
said : " The Anabaptists that were burnt here in divers 
towns in England (as I heard of credible men, I saw 
them not myself) went to their death without any fear in 
the world. Well, let them go. There was in the old 
doctors' times another kind of poison-heretic, that were 
called Donatists ; and these heretics went to* their execu- 
tion as though they should have gone to some jolly recre- 
ation or banquet, to some belly-cheer or to a play. And 
will ye argue then, He goes to his death boldly or prayer- 
fully, ergo, he dieth in a just cause? Nay! " 

Great Hugh Latimer, big soul though he was, had not 
come to the Baptist position of soul-liberty ! 

Even in America Baptists have suffered much. Was it 
Josh Billings who said, " The Puritans came over to wor- 
ship God according to the dictates of their own conscience 
and to keep other people from worshiping Him according 



The House of Peace 207 

to their'n " ? The Puritan churches in New England 
limited political suffrage to membership in their churches, 
and forbade the forming of all dissenting churches. 
Roger Williams, the Baptist, was driven from Massachu- 
setts Colony, and took refuge in the wilderness amongst 
the Narragansetts. The great exile founded " a state 
without a king and a church without a bishop. " In the 
charter for Rhode Island colony it was provided that no 
person should at any time be molested or punished or 
even called in question for any difference of opinion in 
religious matters. 

Justice Story, of the United States Supreme Court, re- 
minds us that this charter was the first code of laws in all 
history which declared that the conscience should be free 
and that men should not be coerced in their religious 
belief. 

The story of Baptist persecution in Massachusetts and 
in Virginia is a glorious page in the history of our faith. 
Not only the magistrates but the people in general often 
became persecutors. Mobs and violence were common 
matters in the early Baptist history of America. There 
are a thousand noble names worthy of conspicuous men- 
tion in the long list of Baptist martyrology, men and 
women and even children, who suffered inconceivable 
sorrows and miseries because they dared to believe in the 
simple gospel of Jesus Christ as taught in His Holy Word, 
and maintained that man should be allowed freedom of 
worship. Let us not refer to these past centuries in order 
to perpetuate hatreds, but the rather to remind ourselves 
that the peace we enjoy today, the freedom to worship 
God without let or hindrance, the peace of a free faith, is 



208 The Undying Torch 

due under God to these Baptist martyrs and those who 
partly or wholly came to share their noble conviction con- 
cerning the inherent freedom of the soul. 

Baptists hold no resentment but they refuse to forget 
" the rock from whence they were hewn" the quarry 
from which they were mined, and they still stand on guard 
against any attempt to withdraw from the American peo- 
ple or from the peoples of the earth the inestimable bles- 
sing of religious liberty. 

Many Baptists even of today bear upon their bodies the 
marks of the chains of the Siberian exile. Petty persecu- 
tions of Baptists still persist in some parts of Central 
Europe, but the dazzling beauty of the gem that the Bap- 
tists discovered for the world, the jewel of absolute and 
unqualified liberty of conscience, has proved so alluring to 
lovers of liberty everywhere that it seems to have become 
the permanent possession of the great majority of man- 
kind. 

2. There is then today in this house of God the peace of 
a free faith. " And in this place will I give peace, saith 
Jehovah of hosts." We also celebrate this morning 
another aspect of peace — the peace of a free church. By 
this we mean a Church unhindered by entanglement with 
the State. It has been impossible for many great Chris- 
tian leaders to abandon the dream of a Church supported 
by the revenues of the State. For the first three hundred 
years of its history, the Christian church was a democracy 
of free assemblies, often persecuted by the civil power but 
never patronized. Then in the Fourth Century came the 
tragic move of Constantine who, largely for political 
reasons, made Christianity the official religion of the Ro- 



The House of Peace 209 

man Empire. Constantine's policy of favoring Christi- 
anity for his own private ends arrested the spiritual de- 
velopment of the church. It poisoned Christianity by 
political methods, by patronage, and by the domination 
of the church by the unregenerate. Thus arose the 
Papacy. We find even the Protestant Reformation fall- 
ing short of its full duty and maintaining the union of 
Church and State. Hence we have an Established Church 
of England, of Scotland, of Prussia, of Sweden, of Hol- 
land, persisting to our own day. Even Protestant mon- 
archs are pleased to have a church subservient to them, 
giving a religious sanction to their regime, so that in time 
of need they can " mobilize God," as the French so keenly 
say. There is a type of ecclesiastical mind which hugely 
delights in special favors and honors from the state; 
which feels its own importance enhanced by the impri- 
matur of a Parliament or a Sovereign. 

Why do we have no Established Church in the United 
States ? The original American Constitution did not for- 
bid it. In Colonial days, Virginia, Massachusetts, and 
various other colonies had their state religion which all 
were taxed to support. Here indeed America is indebted 
to the Baptists who were numerous, particularly in Vir- 
ginia, and who had been loyal supporters of Washington 
and the Revolution as against the tyranny of the king and 
his bishops. The Constitution of the United States 
guaranteed freedom of conscience but it did not guarantee 
a free Church in a free State. The Baptists acted 
promptly and through Patrick Henry and James Madison 
petitioned for an amendment to the Constitution of the 
United States. Washington warmly supported their posi- 



210 The Undying Torch 

tion. On their initiative the First Amendment was 
eventually adopted by the States. Recent history makes 
us keenly aware of the substance of the Eighteenth and 
Nineteenth Amendments, but what was the content of the 
First Amendment to the Constitution? It may be called 
the Baptist Amendment. The First Amendment forbids 
the establishment of a State Church within the territories 
of the United States. All religions stand on an equal foot- 
ing in America today. They must win on their merits. 
The Baptist demands equal rights in the law for all forms 
of religious belief. Even the infidel and the Mormon find 
their protection under the Baptist Amendment. Many 
other sovereignties, particularly in this hemisphere, have 
imitated us in the separation of Church and State, but 
Baptists will never be content until every established 
church of Protestantism has been disestablished; until 
every political ambassador is withdrawn from the Vati- 
can; until the Roman Curia renounces its vicious preten- 
sion to temporal power; until every inhabitant of a Mo- 
hammedan land shall be protected in the full exercise of 
his rights of faith and his right to have that faith enjoyed 
on terms of equality with Mohammedanism itself. 

The machinery of government in our judgment will 
move with ever-increasing efficiency and enlightenment 
in proportion as it becomes disentangled from the tentacles 
of ecclesiasticism. Christianity can only be victorious in 
an increasingly democratic age by reverting to its own 
original democratic character and repudiating all special 
favors from the public crib. The battle for a free church 
the world around is not completed, but let us thank God 
that in this house today in this portion of America favored 



The House of Peace 211 

above other portions of a land everywhere blest, we are 
enjoying the peace that comes from a church unhindered 
by evil traditions of state alliance. 

It is true then that we this day are like unto ancient 
Israel. We build our temple and dedicate it to a sovereign 
God who through His providence has given to us the 
gift of peace. Let us joy and rejoice not only that there 
are no infamous informers in our congregation today, 
ready to report as in olden times to the civil and state 
officers that we have broken the law by convening as 
Baptists in this house; let us rejoice not only because we 
were not met this morning at the gate of this temple by 
a display of arms, bright spear-points barring our way 
into our own house; not only because we have here in 
this place at this hour the privilege of unmolested wor- 
ship and the opportunity for unhindered proclamation of 
the gospel, but because through the long centuries we, as 
Baptists, have done something more than our share to 
obtain these blessings not only for ourselves but for all 
men ! 

There are in America today some fifteen millions of 
Baptists and Baptist adherents. We are glad with a 
solemn gladness that we have upon us no stain of blood. 
We have never persecuted others because of their diver- 
gence from ourselves in belief, but we have gloriously 
given, not mere religious tolerance, but full religious and 
ecclesiastical liberty as a great discovery of untold political 
and spiritual value both to America and, through America, 
to the world. 

Itv is a peculiarly happy circumstance that the First 
Baptist Church of Pasadena, a free Church in a free State, 



212 The Undying Torch 

has chosen as the type of architecture for its present 
edifice, a Spanish modification of the old Roman basilica. 
When Constantine made Christianity the religion of the 
Roman Empire, many ancient halls of justice and town- 
halls were taken over and utilized by the church. These 
Roman public buildings were used as market-places, with 
rows of stalls indicated by arches, running on either side 
of the building. The arches in this very structure are 
reminiscent of those ancient booths for merchandise and 
produce. The main portion of the basilica was used for 
public assemblies, and for festive occasions, as well as for 
the common exchange of gossip and merchandise. In 
this space — the nave — we have placed the bulk of our 
pews. Our ministers and choir occupy the old tribune 
where once the Roman magistrate sat on an elevated plat- 
form, a marble balustrade separating him from the clients 
and prosecutors who came before him. 

When Christian congregations obtained the use of these 
ancient structures their architects needed to make but a 
single modification. They extended a transept on either 
side of the nave and this gave to the ground plan of the 
basilica the form of a cross. This was accentuated by 
pushing back the apse so as to furnish room for the 
choir in addition to the clergy. Eventually towers were 
raised above the ancient basilicas, both as items of beauty 
and as vantage-points from which innovations known as 
bells and chimes could summon worshipers from afar. 
The modifications we observe in this stately structure. 

Thus is this Pasadena edifice today, under the caress of 
a climate identical with that of the Italy under whose 
skies Constantine confiscated the ancient basilicas, we rear 




FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF PASADENA 
Viewed from Holly Street 



The House of Peace 213 

this modern basilica in an attempt to rededicate the most 
ancient form of Christian architecture to the service of a 
free Church in a free State. 

II 

Our text this morning suggests not only an outward 
peace, but an inward peace. " And in this place will I 
give peace, saith Jehovah of hosts." Surely the prophet 
meant more than the cessation of war and the checkmat- 
ing of earthly enemies. Himself a man of spiritual power, 
he was not unaware that outward peace is a poor half of 
the matter. There must be an inner peace. Israel was to 
have the outward peace of a favoring Providence. Israel 
was also to have the inner peace of Spiritual Privilege. 
They who had long been in exile amongst heathen gods 
and pagan civilizations, their souls offended by idolatries, 
were now to sit in the assembly of Zion and hear once 
more the glorious hymns of David. Once more they were 
sheep having a Shepherd, who cared for their souls and 
who would lead them into the green pastures and beside 
the still waters. And to us the greatness of this sacred 
hour is not found alone in our celebration of our freedom 
to worship God according to our conscience. Our chief 
delight is that this house is to be a house of peace, a 
place of high spiritual privilege to all who pass through 
its doors. 

La Rochefoucauld has sapiently said, " If we have not 
peace within ourselves it is in vain to seek it from outward 
sources. " The supreme gift of God is His gift of an 
inner tranquillity. How dear to the thoughtful of all ages 
are the peace passages of the Bible ; 



214 The Undying Torch 

" Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is 
stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee." 

" The peace of God which passeth all understanding 
shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ 
Jesus." 

" And the God of peace shall be with you." 

" Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you; not 
as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart 
be troubled, neither let it be fearful." 

It is true as we have seen, that there is an outward 
peace to which the people of God are entitled. Liberty to 
build their temples in peace and worship their God. Lib- 
erty to proclaim their truth and extend their work. Our 
new church is a monument to Baptist achievement and a 
reminder of Baptist rights for many centuries denied us, 
but our new building is also a House of Rest; a place 
where the peace of God becomes the possession of man. 
" In this place will I give peace." 

1. In this house we are confident that we shall find the 
peace of a Divine compassion and forgiveness. Modern 
life, infinitely varied and hopeful, is no less restless than 
was ancient Israel. There is no fundamental peace apart 
from a sense of the love of God and the forgiveness of our 
transgressions. The heart-beat of modern civilization has 
quickened into a feverish seeking for satisfying thrills, yet 
victims of this activity though we may be, we are con- 
scious that there is but one satisfying fountain, one heal- 
ing spring. " My people have committed two evils. They 
have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn 
out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold 
no water." 



The House of Peace 215 

Oh, the everlasting cistern-building of human life ! The 
wilful seeking after evasive mirages while all the time our 
souls are thirsting for the peace which only comes to the 
one who bends the knee at Calvary. 

Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? 
The blood of Jesus whispers, " Peace within." 

We dedicate these walls to the proclaiming of an 
atoning love, of an opulent compassion, of a forgiveness 
that the penitent soul may be gloriously conscious of ! 

2. Here in this house we shall also have the peace of 
a united fellowship. This is an aspect of peace we can- 
not value too highly. It is the peace which floods our 
hearts when we are conscious that we are part of a seek- 
ing fellowship of likeminded souls. Is there a more 
bitter loneliness than that of the man who feels himself 
deserted of his brethren? We look forward confident 
not only that we shall find here a blessing from heaven 
but also a blessing from one another. Common motives 
will possess our minds. A common devotion will master 
our hearts. In each act of public worship we will be 
sharing with each other the loaves of our heavenly feast. 
Out in the world we shall have tribulation and opposi- 
tion. We shall be constantly misunderstood. Men will 
be blind to the better and deeper part of us. But within 
these walls the depths within us will answer to the depths 
in our fellow Christian's soul, and mind will link with 
mind, and heart flow into heart, and there will be the 
peace of understanding and cooperation and the solemn 
sense of a common trusteeship of the " faith once for all 
delivered to the saints/' 



216 The Undying Torch 

3. Here too in this house there shall be the peace of a 
noble service. " Nothing can bring you peace," Emerson 
reminds us, " but the triumph of principles." It is true 
there is an unspeakable peace which floods the heart of the 
repentant sinner when he puts his faith in Christ, but un- 
less he enters heartily and passionately into the service of 
Christ, he will find himself strangely unsettled and rest- 
less. When a man becomes a Christian he joins a moving 
column of militant soldiers. The only way for him to 
maintain the rhythm is to keep step and march on. 

Weary saints sometimes cry out against the necessity 
of their incessant labors. " Let some one else," they 
cry, " care for the souls of men. Let some one else feed 
the poor, visit the sick and bury the dead, instruct the 
ignorant, and oppose the selfish." But they find invari- 
ably that when they abdicate their place of service they 
have said farewell to peace. A world of profound spiri- 
tual need surrounds the Christian. It will give him no 
peace but will corrode his powers unless he becomes a 
minister unto its necessities. 

But oh, what a peace there is in Christian service ! 

Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed? 
To do the will of Jesus — this is rest. 

And remember, please, that it is a mighty, militant 
" will " that must be done. He has a vast program of 
which we must be a gladly helpful part. Not to the 
deserter or the shirker but to the eager sharer of a 
Saviour's passion for a lost world there comes the gift of 
peace. Some men permit themselves to be brushed into 
the ditch. They become spectators of life. Others seek 



The House of Peace 217 



for themselves a niche ; but the Christian is content with 
neither ditch or niche. He seeks a place of participation 
in God's movement toward a redeemed humanity. 

To the work! to the work! if you would know the joy 
of peace. 

4. There is a fourth phase of this inward peace; it is 
the peace of an assured immortality. The vast spread of 
modern education has quickened the mentality of men. 
The profound necessity for an assurance of immortality 
was never so felt as today. Statesmen, facing the prob- 
lems of the political world, sociologists studying the great 
questions of the maintenance and improvement of the 
social order, moralists dealing with questions of conduct 
and character, are alike coming to the Christian church 
and saying : " Renew the faith of men in a life beyond the 
grave. Men are not fit to live here who have cast aside 
the fear of judgment or who have dimmed the hope of 
the glory everlasting." 

Here within these walls, made sacred by the blessing 
of God and sanctified by great congregations of seeking 
souls through the years that are to come, there shall 
abound the peace of certitude — the assurance of the life 
and glory never ending. 

Here there shall be taught, and men shall in great 
multitudes believe, that through repentance and faith in 
our Lord Jesus Christ there is laid up for men an inheri- 
tance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not 
away. Out from these walls shall go ministers and lay- 
workers who will repeat to the despairing and dying the 
words of the sovereign Saviour : " In my Father's house 
are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." 



218 The Undying Torch 

We who come in touch with a deathless Christ here and 
receive by faith an impartation of His eternal nature, will 
be vivified with a peace so great that we shall be able to 
share it with a puzzled and inquiring world of troubled 
men. 

In Henry Van Dyke's little book entitled " What Peace 
Means/' he speaks of our faith in immortality and says : 

The faith in immortality brings with it the sense of order, 
tranquillity, steadiness, and courage in the present life. It sets 
us free from mean and cowardly temptations, makes it easier 
to resist the wild animal passions of lust and greed and 
cruelty, brings us into eternal relations and fellowship, makes 
us partners with the wise and good of all the ages, enobles 
our earthly patriotism by giving us a heavenly citizenship. . . . 
The faith in immortality sets a touch of the imperishable on 
every generous impulse and unselfish deed. . . . Here is the 
patience of the saints, the glorious courage of patriots, 
martyrs and confessors, something more bright and shin- 
ing than secular morality can bring forth, — a flashing of 
the inward light which fails not, but grows clearer as 
death draws near. "Are you in great distress?" asked a 
nurse of an American soldier whose legs had been shot away 
on the battle-field. " I am in as great peace," said he, 
" through Jesus my Lord, as a man can possibly be, out of 
Paradise." 

This house is dedicated today not to speculation, not to 
disillusionment and disenchantment, but to a renewing 
of our faith in the unspeakable delights and privileges of 
that realm and state which we call heaven. Here in this 
place peace will be multiplied to the sons of men, for the 
very light of heaven itself shall fall upon the congrega- 
tions that shall here assemble before the unchanging and 
inspired Book of God. 

5. And now as I come to the end of this message may 



The House of Peace 219 

I say that the various phases of this inward peace of 
spiritual privilege which I have been discussing may all be 
summed up in the phrase, the peace of a Divine Presence. 
Here in this house we shall expect in a peculiarly intense 
fashion to sense the presence of the eternal and compas- 
sionate God. Are then these walls more sacred than the 
mountain ramparts of the Sierra Madre ? Is not the pres- 
ence of God to be as much expected on the crest of San 
Gabriel or in the snow-fields of San Antonio? Are there 
not more glorious altar decorations there? Can we rival in 
this temple, at the foot of this mountain, that grander and 
nobler temple which is the mountain itself? And shall 
we not admit that God can be contained within no walls 
that man has builded, however strong and stately? 

The heaven is My throne 

And earth is the footstool of My feet; 

What manner of house will ye build Me, saith the Lord; 

Or what is the place of My rest? 

Did not My hands make all these things? 

Aye, true! Yet there is a special assurance of the 
presence of God which constitutes our most precious pos- 
session at this hour. Is there not a promise that saith, 
" Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, 
there am I in the midst " ? Evidently there are blessings 
that are communal ; there are aspects of the Godhead only 
made apparent to us in the place of united worship. 
Here in this house, this house of meeting, we have some- 
thing that the mountains with all their grandeur do not 
contain. We have stones builded with the mortar of sacri- 
ficial giving and earnest prayer. The virtues of obedience, 
of love to Christ and love for the lost, alone explain the 
Q 



220 The Undying Torch 

facilities and conveniences of this temple. In this emphatic 
sense the architect and builder of this place is none other 
than the Carpenter of Nazareth. He who had no place to 
lay His head has roofed us over with these beams. It is He 
who raised this high tower against the sky, to remind men 
of His ever-offered gospel. He has taken our gifts and 
out of them has erected a place for His peace, and here 
there shall be more than the humble " two or three " who 
shall meet in His name and claim the special blessing of 
His eternal Presence. 

He will fill this house with glory ! Men will be 
strangely wrought upon in this place. They will be moved 
to forsake their sins ; they will resolve to do high and noble 
things ; they will be rallied against all organized evil and 
wickedness in the world ; they will have such experiences 
as Joan had in her garden when the Voices came unto her 
and made a simple maiden to become a nation's deliverer. 
Spiritual chains will be broken here ! damning doubts will 
be dissipated ; broken hearts will be mended ; and a thou- 
sand far-reaching influences for truth and holiness and 
human helpfulness and Christian fidelity will flow from 
this place as though it were indeed a gushing and a glori- 
ous fountain; and all of this will come to pass because 
there will be One who will be in our midst to give us 
peace ! 

Aye, men will be moved to undertake great things ; new 
powers will enter into them in this House. And this will 
not be at all strange but will the rather be the normal and 
expected thing. For Who is it who promises us the gift 
of peace in the house of God? Is it not " Jehovah of 
Hosts " ? " And in this place will I give peace, saith 



The House of Peace 221 

Jehovah of hosts!" It is the King of kings who thus 
speaks ; the Commander of all angelic armies ; He who has 
all potencies in His pierced palm. Thus our peace is a 
guaranteed peace; it is a guarded peace; it is peace plus 
Divine power. It is the peace of the Lord of Hosts ! 



MxBttlhmonB MtB&aQtB 



©Ij? ©rttyooo* Sfeapottathk for %n?8% 



One of the most fascinating and stimulating books 
ever issued from the press of America is the volume en- 
titled "Phillips Brooks," written by Alexander V. G. 
Allen, and in that volume no quotation from Brooks is 
more characteristic than the following: 

" My one great comprehensive answer then to the ques- 
tion, What is the best method of dealing in the pulpit with 
popular skepticism ? is really this : Make known and real to 
men by every means you can command the personal Christ, 
not doctrine about Him, but Him; strike at the tyranny of 
the physical life by the power of His spiritual presence. 
Let faith mean, make faith mean, trusting Him and trying 
to obey Him. Call any man a Christian who is following 
Him. Denounce no error as fatal which does not separate a 
soul from Him. Offer Him to the world as He offered 
and is forever offering Himself." 




©tp dfrtijnitax ft»0tmnatttl» far ifcrmj 

N the last quarter of a century we have been 
inundated by a flood of theological and 
philosophical rationalism. It has permeated 
everywhere and is as loathsome as the frogs 
of Egypt. It is a " defeatist " propaganda. 
It enervates and in the end would destroy distinctively 
evangelical Christianity. And evangelical Christianity is 
the only Christianity that deserves to be perpetuated. 
Where shall we place the responsibility for this revival of 
ancient infidelity under new and softer names? Shall we 
blame the German universities with their unregenerate 
State church professors? Yes, in part. But orthodoxy 
is also to blame. By " orthodoxy " I mean that great body 
of Christians who believe in the fundamentals of the 
gospel. We who rejoice to be known for our loyalty to 
the Word of God are not without our part in making 
easy the way of heresy. 

1. In the first place, our orthodox forefathers often 
failed to hold their disciples to the faith. Much of the 
shallow and false teaching of today falls from the lips of 
men who were taught their theology in seminaries that 
were then undoubtedly orthodox. Orthodoxy had its 
chance with these men and lost out, partly, no doubt, the 
fault of the peculiar mental twists of these students, but 
also in part the fault of their teachers. " And the things 
which thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, 
the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able 

227 



228 The Undying Torch 

to teach others also." It is not enough to be true to our- 
selves — we must train others in the truth. 

2. Lack of spirituality on the part of orthodox people 
always breeds doctrinal reaction. A dead orthodoxy, 
locked in creeds, forms, and professions, is properly dis- 
trusted. The only acceptable orthodoxy is orthodoxy in 
action — an orthodoxy showing itself in devotion, compas- 
sion, prayerfulness, holiness, and energy for the right. 
He who is unspiritual is unorthodox. There is an ortho- 
doxy of love as well as one of faith. What God hath 
joined together let no man put asunder! 

3. Many orthodox people are stingy. They are willing 
to wrangle over theological distinctions, but they will not 
give even a tenth of their income to make Christ known 
to a sinful race. Unconsecrated money is the church's 
greatest curse. It looks to unbelief, revolt, and heresies. 

4. Many orthodox believers make little or no effort to 
win the lost to Christ. It is mentally impossible to believe 
that men out of Christ are lost and then make no move on 
their behalf, unless there is something wrong in the life. 
The faults in the life breed errors in the brain. " Tell 
me," said Fichte, " what life a man lives and I will tell 
you what philosophy he will adopt." It is a blasphemous 
thing to pretend that we believe in the realities of sin and 
judgment and then not take lost sinners upon our hearts. 

5. Orthodox people often make heretics increase by un- 
fair theological arguments and by misrepresenting their 
theological opponents or accusing them of the worst pos- 
sible motives. Even those who deny the Lord who 
bought them with His blood must be treated fairly and 
with kindness and compassion. They must not be carica- 



The Orthodox Responsible for Heresy 229 

tured. Ascribe to your opponent in theology the best 
possible motive. Fair play to others, no matter what they 
do to you ! 

6. Another error of many orthodox Christians is per- 
mitting themselves to sneer at the term " social service/' 
and deprecate all attempts to make the world a better 
place in which to live. This is worse than folly. The 
world's best benefactors, in civil and religious and social 
and economic progress, have been orthodox believers in 
the evangelical faith. To sneer at " social service " is to 
sneer at the saintly labors of Howard and Wilberforce, 
of John Bright and Gladstone, of Doctor Bernardo and 
of William Booth, of Florence Nightingale and of 
Frances Willard. The greatest service we can render 
society is, of course, to win men to Christ. But our ser- 
vice must not end there; we must teach these redeemed 
men how to express Christ's holy life in all human rela- 
tionships. Evangelism and social service are twins and 
cannot live in separation. It will be a glad day for 
American Christianity when all the social service theorists 
and faddists become soul-winners and all the evangelistic 
Christians become servants of the common good. 

7. Some orthodox leaders abuse the holy truth of the 
Second Advent of Christ. They become fatalistic, saying 
that as our Lord is coming in person to reign, it is foolish 
to " patch up " the social order, and even folly to expect a 
great world-wide spiritual refreshing. This attitude of 
mind is dangerous. Each dispensation has ended in reac- 
tion and judgment, but God's purposes are not defeated. 
The dispensations are like the waves of the sea — each, as 
it falls back from the beach, discloses the mud and ooze 



230 The Undying Torch 

of the ocean bed. But the tide keeps coming in and each 
dispensation is more glorious than the last. The Blessed 
Hope should nerve us to our utmost effort of human help- 
fulness and world-wide evangelization. Then, when 
Christ comes, we shall not be ashamed before Him. 

8. Some orthodox people are guilty of undervaluing 
proper Biblical criticism. Textual, historical, and literary 
criticism ("lower" and " higher" so-called) have occu- 
pied a noble place in the intellectual life of the world. 
To no group of intellectuals are we more indebted than 
to such servants of Christ as Tregelles, Lange, Tischen- 
dorf , Westcott, Broadus, Hort, Moule, Sayce, Robertson, 
Orr, and a multitude more. 

The destructive schools of unconverted critics, their 
scholarship blinded by their unbelief, should not prevent 
orthodox people from rejoicing in and gladly using the 
noble contributions of devout scholarship. How poor the 
theological world would be without these great minds ! 

9. There is also a dangerous undervaluing of science 
on the part of some orthodox believers. I have even 
heard zealous orthodox ministers speak sneeringly of " the 
scientific method." Science is the collection of facts, the 
study of facts, their ordered arrangement, and the attempt 
to draw proper conclusions. It is the weakness of our 
school system that we do not emphasize laboratory science 
half enough. It would be to the advantage of every 
evangelical minister if he possessed a thorough training 
in the natural sciences and in the truly scientific method. 
The Bible itself appeals to that method. It offers men 
the fact of Christ and, without coercion, asks them to enter 
the spiritual laboratory of prayer. Salvation always 



The Orthodox Responsible for Heresy 231 

comes to those who use the scientific method in relating 
their souls to Christ. So let us rejoice over every ad- 
vance in scientific learning, yet, of course, challenging as 
unscientific many destructive and irreligious teachers of 
science who attack the Word of God in the assumed name 
of " science." Let us love and delight in the study of 
God's world as well as God's Word. 

10. Some orthodox leaders and churches fail to co- 
operate heartily in proper denominational movements. 
Ofttimes the denominational plan is faulty and open to 
criticism or even revolt and denunciation. We have been 
the victims in the last few years of some unspiritual and 
shallow planning. But most of the " movements " of the 
evangelical denominations, the Baptist included, have been 
constructive, worthy, and Biblical. Let us stand by and 
heartily support every reasonable enterprise of Christ's 
cause and learn to work together with increasing effective- 
ness as we near the goal of twenty centuries of effort — 
the evangelization of the world. 

In particular, orthodox believers should encourage the 
present emphasis upon stewardship and the consecration 
of money and life. 

11. Orthodox people are to be blamed also for not pro- 
viding a modern, up-to-date, popular, and accessible 
orthodox literature. A well-planned and vigorous propa- 
ganda has been going on for years on the part of the Ger- 
manized American theologians. They have captured 
several seminaries and colleges. They control several pub- 
lishing houses. They are writing and circulating the 
literature of a defeatist theology — a theology of compro- 
mise with the world, a theology which attempts to pluck 



232 The Undying Torch 

the crown of deity from the Son of God; a literature 
plausible, insinuating, often orthodox in its expressions 
and yet filled with a deadly venom of infidelity. This 
literature is put out in modern fashion and has many 
attractions to the mind and eye. It is not enough to de- 
nounce these publications. We must meet this movement 
by providing a thoroughly modern orthodox literature. 
We must do again what we did in a previous controversial 
age in our history — we must create and publish books and 
pamphlets and circulate them far and wide. Some of 
this is beginning to be done. But the movement must be 
organized and the enemy challenged, met in the open 
field of the public mind, and defeated. 

Our best thinkers and scholars and our most popular 
writers should be assigned to the task of flooding the 
denominational field with strong, plain, fair, and convinc- 
ing books, booklets, leaflets, exposing the new Arianism 
and rationalism among evangelicals, and expounding in 
modern shape the foundations of faith and salvation. 

Strauss and Renan came first with their Lives of Christ. 
But they were soon overtaken and overwhelmed by Geikie 
and Edersheim and Stalker and Farrar and Andrews and 
Broadus. Orthodoxy is to blame if it allows heresy to 
monopolize the attractions of modern literature. Let us 
repent ourselves that by our stupidity and carelessness we 
have allowed unworthy heresies to get the start of us. 

Beloved in Christ, in these and sundry other ways 
orthodoxy is seriously at fault. Let us repent of our sins 
of omission and our sins of commission, and live, speak, 
labor, and serve in a manner more worthy of the Lamb 
of God. 



II 
2ty* (Sratt ©nwttmrat* 



" I prayed God this day to make me an extraordinary 
Christian." — White field's prayer. 

" When Mr. Moody paid his first visit to England, 
Dr. Dale attended the meetings to ascertain, if he could, 
the secret of the evangelist's extraordinary power. * His 
preaching/ wrote Dr. Dale, in recording his experience, 
'his preaching had all the effect of Luther's; he exulted 
in the free grace of God. His joy. was contagious. Men 
leaped out of darkness into light and lived a Christian life 
for ever afterwards/ Now, singularly enough, Dr. Dale's 
predecessor at Carr's Lane — John Angell James — submitted 
Mr. Moody's predecessor — Charles G. Finney — to an 
identically similar investigation. And he came to an 
identically similar conclusion. The enormous crowds; the 
profound impression; the spiritual awakening; the ethical 
reformation; it was the contagion of the preacher's joy! 
Finney was fiery; and fire spreads!" 

— F. W* Boreham. 




®lj? (&vmt ®rtummrate 

" He gave some to be evangelists." — Ephesians 4:11. 

HE evangelist is to the Christian church very 
largely what the prophet was to the Jewish 
theocracy. It is true there were in the New 
Testament both prophets and evangelists, 
but in the later history of Christianity, the 
mystic and inspirational mission of the New Testament 
prophet has been welded with the proclaiming and reform- 
ing mission of the Old Testament prophet, and the product 
is the evangelist. 

The Episcopal bishop of the diocese in which Phila- 
delphia is located announced that Episcopalians were at 
liberty to participate in the " Billy Sunday Campaign " in 
that city, for, saith the bishop, " We do not regard Mr. 
Sunday as a clergyman, and therefore his ordination is 
not under discussion. He is not a priest, but a prophet." 
The Church of Christ will always need the prophet- 
evangelist, a man who not only intensifies the appeal to 
the individual and strikes for an instantaneous verdict on 
the question of accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as a per- 
sonal Saviour, but one who, by reason of his wide experi- 
ence in many communities, is able to expose the social sins 
of an entire city, or state, or even nation, and apply the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ to the rectification of social rela- 
tionships. 

I was interested and somewhat amused while talking 
R 235 



236 The Undying Torch 

with Mr. Sunday about " Social Service " to discover 
what a complete misunderstanding he had of the use of 
the term. He said : " Social Service is all right. The 
socials in the church do a lot of good." But while Mr. 
Sunday did not use the term " Social Service " in my 
judgment intelligently, he is himself a social service ex- 
pert of the highest efficiency. He simply applies the gospel 
in such prophetic fashion that whole communities change 
their ways of living and great strides are taken in the 
direction of a more ideal social order. 

This has been true of the evangelists of the past. The 
reigning sins of their times called them into the arena in 
much the same fashion as Jeremiah and Ezekiel were 
enlisted. 

The first evangelist whose work profoundly affected the 
American people was George Whitefield. So many excel- 
lent articles have recently appeared on Whitefield that it 
would be superfluous for me to outline his career in detail. 
Of course Whitefield's indebtedness to Wesley is beyond 
all computation, and John Wesley himself has had a 
profound influence in America, but this was not through 
his direct evangelistic efforts. During the period that he 
was preaching in the Georgia colonies he was still a slave 
to legalistic views and had not reached the assurance of 
faith. It was only after his experience in America as 
Chaplain for General Oglethorpe that he came to the 
place where the Grace of God became his theme. Wesley 
was truly a Christian man before the famous night when 
he believed himself to be for the first time converted. But 
on that night he received the witness of God's Word that 
he was a child of God. This came too late for him to 



The Great Triumvirate 237 

inaugurate and install his new type of preaching in the 
American colonies. 

Methodists as a rule were Tories or Loyalists in 
America during the period of the Revolution, and there- 
fore Methodism itself showed no signs of growth in that 
period. Of course the evangelistic influence of Wesley 
was felt tremendously through the newly organized 
Methodist Church which soon conquered the suspicions of 
the American people, and by flaming devotion and self- 
sacrifice in reaching out to the lost and destitute, made 
itself a factor of the first rank in the life of the nation. 
In spite of Wesley's views on the merits of the Revolu- 
lution, he in a real sense belongs to America more even 
than to England for here his doctrines have had their 
largest fruition. 

But it was Whitefield who gained the inspiration of 
his life from Wesley, so far as it came from any human 
source, and who then had the courage and clear-sighted- 
ness to differ with Wesley on the matter of Calvinism. 
He brought to America by successive evangelistic tours 
a veritable transformation in the life of the colonists from 
Savannah in the South to Newburyport in the North. 

Baptists in particular felt the powerful aid of White- 
field's evangelism. Before his arrival we had won our 
independence and formulated our doctrines, but his 
evangel set the Baptist churches on fire and turned thou- 
sands of members of the more formal churches into our 
fellowship. 

Albert Henry Newman reminds us of how largely the 
Baptist cause in New England profited by the new awak- 
ening which was itself mainly due to the burning zeal of 



238 The Undying Torch 

Whitefield. In 1740 there were in Massachusetts six 
Baptist churches ; in Rhode Island, eleven ; in Connecticut, 
four. Most of these were feeble, and some of them were 
in a declining state. All but four or five seem to have 
been Arminian, and Arminianism had invaded some of 
the few Calvinistic churches. By 1728 the number of 
Baptist churches in Massachusetts had risen to thirty, in 
Connecticut to twelve, and in Rhode Island to thirty-six, 
and one church had organized in New Hampshire. They 
were by this time so full of evangelistic zeal that progress 
was henceforth easy. In 1790 Massachusetts had ninety- 
two churches; Rhode Island, thirty-eight; New Hamp- 
shire, thirty-two; Maine, fifteen; Connecticut, fifty-five, 
and Vermont, thirty-five. Whitefield's influence was also 
remarkable in Philadelphia and elsewhere. 

Although bitterly opposed in his own time by the doc- 
trinally careless, by the worldly and by the formalists, 
Whitefield stands today almost beyond criticism both as 
a man of evangelistic talent and of Christian character. 
Careful students of the preaching of the ages incline more 
and more to the view that John Chrysostom and George 
Whitefield were the two greatest orators that the church 
has produced. Of the two men, Whitefield was less of a 
student but was equally consecrated, living a thoroughly 
unselfish life, ceasing not in arduous labors until the hour 
of his death. He was one of the great hearts of human 
history, showing to the world a soul that was truly Christ- 
like. The cause of present-day evangelism will be 
strengthened and made influential in proportion as it de- 
mands of its exponents a likeness both in spirit and 
life to George Whitefield. 



The Great Triumvirate 239 

George Whitefield died in 1770. Charles G. Finney 
was born in 1792. He was brought to Christ in 1821 and 
shortly after his conversion was endued with the power of 
the Holy Spirit in a most remarkable manner. It is inter- 
esting to remember that both Whitefield and Wesley were 
Oxford men, and although the curriculum at that Uni- 
versity in their day was pitiably meager, yet they had the 
best advantages of their time. In his autobiography, 
Charles Finney disclaims the possession of a satisfactory 
education, but nevertheless he was far from uneducated. 
Instead of entering Yale, as he had planned to do when 
he had finished high school, he studied law in a private 
office for some three years. He also had experience as a 
school-teacher. After entering the ministry he acquired 
some knowledge of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. 

Immediately upon his conversion, Finney entered upon 
a long and arduous life of evangelistic effort, and just as 
Whitefield had been aroused to a greater zeal by the dead 
formalism of the churches of his day, so Finney was in a 
like manner stung into more vigorous action by opposition 
from the formal members of the churches. The great 
revival associated with his name cut right through the 
membership of the professing churches and caused no 
little bitterness. If a great awakening occurred today it 
would doubtless divide many churches just as in the time 
of Whitefield and Finney. 

The influence of Charles G. Finney is incalculable. 
Like Wesley, he was a great enemy of slavery and helped 
to nerve the North for its great struggle against that 
intrenched iniquity. In his day infidelity of a popular 
and pernicious nature was organized as it has not been 



240 The Undying Torch 

since he made his successful attack upon it. The infidelity 
of the present day is more or less hypocritical and finds 
its expression in a rationalism which makes pretense of 
being religious and even Christian. Thoroughgoing, out- 
in-the-open infidelity received a staggering blow from the 
mind and methods of Charles Finney. 

Thousands of Christian leaders, many of them living 
still, were brought into the ministry through his influence. 
Henry Clay Trumbull is an instance. Mr. Trumbull was 
a by-product of one of the revivals which Mr. Finney 
held in Connecticut, being the convert of a convert of 
that meeting. Dwight L. Moody was led to Christ by 
those who had themselves been influenced by Mr. Finney. 
George Williams, the founder of the Young Men's 
Christian Association, began his work in London after 
reading Finney's " Lectures on Revivals," a book that was 
used to bring to him a new spiritual experience. Oberlin 
College is a monument to Mr. Finney. George Williams, 
an Englishman, influenced America greatly; Charles 
Finney returned this contribution by his remarkable work 
in Great Britain. 

We hesitate to call Finney an orator. He was logic 
on fire. His propositions were deadly. He who began 
with Mr. Finney was compelled to accompany him as he 
marched on through his discourses. While not as lovable 
perhaps as Whitefield, he was a man of absolute and un- 
questioned integrity, his life was above suspicion and his 
motives unselfish. He was not a man who used the gospel 
to exploit his personal powers but one who invested his 
talents to the furthering of Jesus Christ's gospel with un- 
tiring energy and utter devotion. We may echo what he 



The Great Triumvirate 241 

very modestly says regarding himself in the opening chap- 
ters of his memoirs, namely, " That it had pleased God to 
connect his name and labors with an extensive movement 
of the church of Christ regarded by some as a new era 
in its progress." 

Passing by many noble men I desire to say a word in 
my concluding paragraphs concerning Dwight L. Moody. 
The life of Mr. Moody constitutes an Anglo-Saxon epic. 
He is the Lincoln of the religious life in America. Placed 
side by side these two men would make an almost 
ludicrous contrast ; the one short, stocky, and exceedingly 
broad-shouldered, in his later years attaining to a decided 
portliness; the other tall and straight. Mr. Moody was 
very active and quick in his movements ; Mr. Lincoln was 
generally very deliberate. One suggested the typical 
hustling New Englander, and the other was a fair speci- 
men of the easy-going Southern temperament. They 
were alike in many ways. They were both self-educated 
men ; both used terse Saxon. Prof. Max Mueller of Ox- 
ford, chancing upon a stray leaf from a volume of Mr. 
Moody's sermons, pronounced it the first piece of 
modern Anglo-Saxon that he had ever read. Lincoln's 
use of the Saxon is well known. Both men were great- 
hearted and humble-minded. It is interesting to think that 
these two great Americans both came into prominence 
with the early history of Chicago. Here Lincoln achieved 
his greatest political victory, and here Moody obtained 
the spiritual prestige that gave him his world opportunity. 

The work of th6 great American evangelist will never 
be fully estimated until some future historian gathers up 
the various lines of his influence upon the world gener- 



242 The Undying Torch 

ally. He not only conducted evangelistic enterprises in 
all parts of the United States and in Great Britain, but 
had a wonderful influence in organizing successfully the 
evangelistic forces in all parts of the world. I think of 
the Northfield Schools, the Moody Bible Institute, and 
the Coffee Clubs of Great Britain as monuments to Mr. 
Moody, but greater monuments are found in such move- 
ments as the Student Volunteers and the World's Student 
Federation. If we would gather together from Great 
Britain and America our greatest religious leaders, we 
would find that a very large percentage of them owe their 
enlistment in Christ's cause to Mr. Moody's influence. 
Directly or indirectly we owe to him such leaders as John 
R. Mott, Wilfred T. Grenfell, Robert Speer, and Henry 
Drummond. 

There is no more fascinating place in American church 
history than Chicago during Mr. Moody's remarkable 
work at the close of the Civil War. It is well to remem- 
ber the social service phases of Mr. Moody's work, educa- 
tionally and in the direction of reforms and his personal 
participation in the work of the Christian commission 
during the war and in the distribution of relief after the 
great fire of 1871. 

It is not without significance either that from Mr. 
Moody's big mission a full regiment of men marched 
South to help settle the issues of freedom and union. 
Practically all of these were converts of Mr. Moody. 

Is it not amazing to see the way in which the Re- 
deemer called to Mr. Moody's side out of the ordinary 
business life of the young Western city, a group of men 
who were to shake the world? Remember that Dwight 



The Great Triumvirate 243 

L. Moody was in the shoe business ; John W. Dean owned 
a printing-press; Major Cole was in the real estate busi- 
ness; Ira D. Sankey had been a revenue collector; P. P. 
Bliss led a choir in Evanston ; D. W. Whittle was super- 
intendent of the Elgin Watch Company. Yet these were 
the men whom the Lord God used to inaugurate a world- 
wide revival. 

The first Sunday night after the Chicago fire Mr. 
Moody preached at the Second Baptist Church. The 
pastor, Dr. E. J. Goodspeed, asked him if he had any 
funds. He said, " Not a cent." Mr. Goodspeed had ten 
dollars which he offered to Mr. Moody. After quite a 
friendly wrangle they divided this money. When the 
service was over Mr. Moody hurried away, forgetting for 
once his Bible, and Pastor Goodspeed looked through it 
with amazement, seeing the thousand ink marks and an- 
notations that revealed to him the secret of Mr. Moody's 
power. I have seen another Bible similarly marked, its 
every margin covered with faded notes. It was the Bible 
of Savonarola, carefully preserved in the cell of the Do- 
minican monastery at Florence. 

Mr. Moody said of the Bible, " I am a greater slave to 
God's Word than any man is to strong drink." His in- 
fluence upon my own life was very marked, although I 
did not know him personally and only heard him speak on 
a few occasions. I think next to God's Word itself, the 
book which has had the greatest influence on my humble 
labors is one now out of print, entitled The Wonderful 
Career of Moody and Sankey in Great Britain and 
America. Its author was Doctor Goodspeed. The most 
beautiful thing I have ever heard of Mr. Moody fell 



244 The Undying Torch 

from the lips of a Christian woman, a member of my 
church, and herself related to Mr. Moody by marriage. 
She said to me, " Mr. Moody was perfect in his own 
family life." 

If I were in a position to dictate the order of business 
of the Christian church of my time, I would place upon 
the calendar as the first item prayer to Almighty God that 
He might raise up or reveal to us and develop for us a 
man who would be worthy to be named as an evangelist 
with George Whitefield, Charles G. Finney, and Dwight 
L. Moody. 



Ill 



This address, like the one following it, was not delivered 
in Pasadena, but was a war-time message. It is because it 
has a permanent significance in the field of Christian mis- 
sions that it is included in this volume. 

The mistake of America has been this. Hier gates have 
been opened too freely to depressing streams of European 
immigrants. The recent Immigration Act is probably the 
wisest piece of legislation enacted since the Eighteenth 
Amendment. America's contribution to Japan is not in 
permitting the Japanese to colonize the Pacific States of 
America. America's contribution to Europe, and to Asia, 
will only be rendered possible by her maintenance of her 
own ideals and civilization. Too long we have permitted 
ourselves to be victimized by a false humanitarianism, while 
we have failed to reach out the helping hand to the lands 
across the sea. 

The place to help the Japanese is in Japan. The best way 
to reach the Italians is through Rome. America should 
export her free gospel and its corollaries of civil and re- 
ligious liberty and all other possible forms of human help- 
fulness, instead of increasing her home mission problem by 
reenforcing the Tokios and Warsaws in the slums of her 
cities. Let us put an end both to careless immigration and 
Pharisaic " isolation." 




u Whatsoever the Church soweth, that shall it also reap." — 
Gal. 6 : 6. Adapted. 

ONCE heard D. L. Moody challenge a vast 
audience in the old Haymarket Theater in 
Chicago to procure a single instance where 
a man had not reaped exactly what he had 
sowed. There was no response. The great 
majority of mankind are convinced that in the moral 
world what a man sows he reaps ; and he reaps more than 
he sows. But the Bible text is also true in a larger sense. 
The Church of Jesus Christ also reaps what it sows. 
Whatsoever the Church soweth that shall it also reap. 

The Church of God is under the harvest law. This 
amenability to the harvest law is shown in the victory of 
the early apostolic church over Rome. The church was 
first sneered at, then opposed, and then legally proscribed 
and bitterly persecuted. Yet during these ten plagues of 
Roman persecution the disciples multiplied. It is esti- 
mated that at the death of the Apostle John there were 
100,000 Christians living on the earth. When the Edict 
of Toleration was issued by Constantine in A. D. 311 it 
is conservatively estimated that there were 10,000,000 pro- 
fessed Christians in the empire, or one-tenth of its total 
population. 

What is the secret of this growth? It is found in the 
fact that under all this heavy opposition the church had 

247 



248 The Undying Torch 

maintained its missionary spirit, and thus had spread from 
India to the Pillars of Hercules. The secret was in the 
seed. The blood of the martyrs (the " witnesses ") was 
indeed the seed of the church. 

But the fact that the church is under the harvest law is 
also shown by its defeat. The church, at the time when 
Mohammedanism had its rise, had become, particularly 
in Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and North Africa, a formal and 
non-missionary church. It had compromised with the 
world and with heathen religions and made no determined 
and serious effort to Christianize even the near-by Arabian 
tribes. It had become a stagnant church, quarreling over 
creeds and properties and forms. It had become a church 
of tradition, practising sacraments instead of ordinances 
and venerating images and relics, and in Arabia it was 
worse than the Judaism from which it had sprung. The 
apostolic church sowed sacrificial service and reaped a 
vast harvest. The church of the seventh century sowed 
to the flesh, and of the flesh it reaped the Mohammedan 
scourge. As a flame licks along the stubble, so the green- 
bannered hosts of the false prophet overran with fire 
and sword and withering taxes lands that had been called 
Christian for centuries. 

Since the world war began we understand that nearly 
2,000,000 Armenians have been slain by the Turks. It is 
a sad thought to us that every one of those lives was lost 
not because of Arabian and Turkish and Kurdish 
atrocity, but because of the non-missionary spirit of the 
church of the sixth and seventh centuries. We are still 
reaping the fruitage of the church's neglect to evangelize 
the backward and despised province of Arabia. Thus we 



Evangelize Europe 249 

have a two-sided illustration of the law of the spiritual 
harvest. 

We find another such dual illustration in the Reforma- 
tion. In obedience to rediscovered truth, under the 
guidance of such leaders as Wyclif, Huss, and Luther, 
the gospel progresses and establishes itself in Protestant 
forms in Northern Europe and Britain, sows devotion and 
heroism and faith, and reaps a mighty triumph. But 
lapsing into scholasticism it loses its missionary impulse 
and, leaving the heathen world to Catholicism, it fell into 
the evils of State Churchism and rationalism and it was 
scourged by dissension and wars and finally driven back 
upon its present line, losing Bohemia, Poland, Austria- 
Hungary, the French Huguenot provinces, and Flanders. 
Had the pure gospel of Wyclif and Luther and Zwingli 
persisted, it would have cleansed Europe of autocracy and 
caste, but the spirit of evangelism and of missions died 
out, and thus came the time of retribution, of dissension 
and deferred victories. 

American Christianity of today is no less under the 
harvest law than the church of past centuries. It may be 
claimed that American Christians were properly absorbed 
by the vast home mission task laid upon them in entering 
and occupying the new continent, but God had plainly 
pointed out to American Christianity its obvious duty not 
only to America, but to Asia and Africa; not only to 
heathenism, but to Europe. There is a sense in which 
the noble founders of our Puritan colonies were evading 
their obligations in Europe in coming Westward. We 
cannot blame them for seeking at great sacrifice to find 
a place where they might carve out states based upon civil 



250 The Undying Torch 

and religious liberty, but they should have remembered 
more constantly the quarry from whence they were digged, 
and should have aided more directly in the solution of 
the great evangelical problem of the home countries. We 
of America were bound to Europe by the ties of blood 
and of faith. We were receiving streams of precious 
life from Europe. Our prosperity is a twofold gift — 
God gave us the land, and Europe gave us the people. 
With all our generosity we were delinquent in a profound 
duty. We failed to reach back by generous gifts of 
money and leadership, and urge on in Europe the uncom- 
pleted work of the Reformation, 

Why has American Christianity taken so little interest 
in the evangelization of Europe in the last fifty years? 
Why have some of our great evangelical denominations 
been diminishing rather than increasing their evangelical 
forces in Europe? We did not really believe that Europe 
needed the gospel. We were trusting to the state religions 
of Northern Europe; we were trusting to the Romanism 
of Southern Europe to solve the spiritual problems of that 
continent. We hoped that education or international 
socialism or an increasing general enlightenment would 
do for Europe what only the free gospel can effect. We 
did not take our stand on the evangelical truth and de- 
mand of ourselves that it be given to Europe. We did not 
systematically strengthen the free churches of Europe and 
permeate European life with the influence of the Word of 
God. With all our progress in missions in heathen lands 
— and heaven knows our progress there has not been what 
it should have been — we failed to see that one way to 
free the Congo of its reign of terror was to evangelize 



Evangelize Europe 251 

Belgium; that one way to evangelize the French Sudan, 
Tonkin, and Madagascar was to evangelize Paris. We 
failed to note the strategic importance of the German peo- 
ple, and we would have been insulted if the religious 
leaders of American churches had demanded sacrificial 
giving on the part of our churches to evangelize Europe. 

Years ago I had personally planned to visit European 
mission fields, and in particular the old Huguenot churches 
in Southern France and the scattered and weak free 
churches of Belgium, Italy, and Spain. I then felt that 
the great problem of all problems was that of Europe. 
It grieved me to note how the line of evangelical progress 
had halted in Europe since the days of the reformers. 
It is true that evangelical missions were to be found 
throughout Europe. It is true that the Young Men's 
Christian Association reached out in brotherly helpfulness 
in organizing and coordinating the evangelical life of 
Europe, but on the whole the effort was feeble and un- 
worthy of the resources that God had given the free 
churches of America. 

Now again the church reaps what it has sown. It 
sowed neglect and it reaps the bloody result of materialis- 
tic civilization. We would not give our sons to evangelize 
Europe with Bible truth. We must needs give them 
to the battle-line. We would not give our money to spread 
the most democratic Book in the world over the face of 
Europe. We must now give our money in war taxes. 
We have sowed a great disobedience. Now we are reap- 
ing the dread result. Whatsoever the church soweth that 
shall it also reap. We would not study the spiritual map 
of Europe. Now we must ponder its war maps. 
s 



252 The Undying Torch 

But this law of the harvest is not one of retribution 
merely ; it is also a law of hope. Note the setting of the 
Bible text : " Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap. For he that soweth unto his own flesh shall of the 
flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth unto the Spirit 
shall of the Spirit reap eternal life." The emphasis is 
on the " shall." It is a text of certainty, and the context 
proves that we have too frequently used this text in its 
negative sense. It is an optimistic utterance. The man 
who sows to righteousness shall reap. The church that 
obeys the law of the harvest shall enter into the harvest. 
We should use these words of the apostle not only to 
analyze the history of the church, but as a beacon-light to 
illuminate and encourage the workers in the present mis- 
sionary enterprise, for in spite of all neglect we have not 
entirely failed. We have begun to sow. We have been 
sowing among the troops on the battle-line. We have 
been sowing in the prison camps. We have been sowing 
in the mobilization camps. We have sent relief to the 
stricken free churches of Europe. We are maintaining 
and, to a degree, extending the net-work of missionary- 
activity in the non-Christian world, and we are beginning 
to humble ourselves and learn the secrets of sacrifice, 
which once carried into the realm of missions will finance 
the work of the world's evangelization. 

While looking in shame on its previous efforts, let the 
church of today remember that there are resources in 
Christ, for this time of crisis, that He is able to develop. 
Let the church encourage the armies and navies of democ- 
racy, the Red Cross, and the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, organizations for relief, the leagues for interna- 



Evangelize Europe 253 

tional brotherhood and for peace, but let the church 
increase the area of its sowing of the spiritual seed. Let 
the theological seminaries and Christian institutions be 
maintained and developed. Let the missionary treasuries 
be filled to the brim. Let the spiritual activities of the 
local churches intensify, and let us as one man believe that 
so much as we sow the seeds of a holy energy, that much 
we shall reap a glorious world harvest ! 



IV 

3% &0itl of Amertra 



This address, while not delivered in Pasadena, is included 
in this volume to give it a place of permanent record. It 
was preached in the pulpit of the Second Baptist Church 
of Chicago on the Sunday, preceding the declaration of 
Congress that the United States of America was in a 
state of war with the Imperial German Government. 

The tension of the occasion was very marked. In Chicago 
in particular the situation was acute through the presence 
there of hundreds of thousands of German-born people who 
had been favored by the pro-German attitude of a time- 
serving mayor. 

These facts will aid in the interpretation of this address. 




" For what shall it profit America to gain the whole world 
and forfeit her soul? " — Mark 8 : 36, paraphrase. 

HE hand of the living God is clearly seen in 
American history. The modern American, 
no less than the ancient Jew, may clearly 
read the workings of God in the recorded 
history of his people. The unmistakable 
providence of God is seen in the fact that He reserved a 
continent until He had a people prepared to exploit it. 
All down the ages, while Homer sang and Hannibal 
fought and Rome rose, flourished, and decayed, the mighty 
Hudson rolled majestic but unseen, to the sea; the vast 
Mississippi was viewed by no single civilized man; the 
ten thousand miles of marshaled mountain from the Land 
of Fire to the Sea of Ice streamed against the skies un- 
known and unsung. Why is a continent, yes, a hemisphere 
given over to the careless and inadequate preemption of 
three hundred thousand uncouth savages when its mighty 
dimensions everywhere spoke of a provision for un- 
counted millions? Can any one doubt the gracious pur- 
poses of God, that He had reserved an adequate place for 
the building of a final civilization? 

Palestine, the ancient chosen land, was packed with 
inhabitants even before it was given to Israel, but here in 
America awaited a virgin soil; a mighty, silent arena, 
waiting for a significant drama, 

257 



258 The Undying Torch 

Man tried to force the hand of God. Thus the Spanish 
absolutism endeavored to stake out this land. God per- 
mitted the Spaniard to announce the new world, it is true, 
but rejected his attempted authority over it, for the 
Spaniard had the venturesomeness to discover but not the 
character to administer. He came for the hectic treasure 
that war and coercion might give him. His heart was not 
in the land but in the gold of its dusky inhabitants. Hence, 
the red and yellow of the Spanish colors were destined to 
die out of the new world's sky. The Spanish Armada 
was defeated in 1588; the Spanish flag fluttered down 
from its last pretense of sovereignty in America in 1898, 
but it had long before that splendid year lost the sub- 
stance of its power in the Western Hemisphere. 

The Spaniards were closely followed by the French in 
the new world, and these sketched the foundations of a 
huge empire, but again their motive is not a sufficient one 
and their dominion is not to endure. I have stood on 
what was once the western outpost of New France, Fort 
Michilimackinac, and mused on the Providence that 
pulled down the white banner of the fleur-de-lis from the 
ramparts of the old fort and supplanted it by the Cross of 
St. George. 

But finally the people had been prepared who should 
possess this goodly continent (for reasons too long to 
detail here I pass by the Virginia settlements of 1607) and 
in the year 1620, 101 souls came out of a stormy sky 
and rested upon the sandy shores of the new continent. 
These were the ones who were destined truly to possess 
the land and lay the foundations of the last and best ex- 
periment in human government. They were not adventur- 



The Soul of America 259 

ers, treasure-hunters, or merely servants of commerce, but 
chiefly pilgrims of faith, feeling themselves to be led by 
a Divine hand and looking upon their new home as one 
preserved by the living God for their occupancy. They 
were men who hated bishops and distrusted kings and 
believed in an open Bible ; and out of these men came the 
incarnations of liberty in schools and assemblies, town- 
halls and state-houses. It was the religious motive that 
determined the form of our American institutions, and it 
is not to be wondered at that three-fourths of our presi- 
dents have been consistent and devout members of evan- 
gelical churches. 

America, then, has a soul. Just as truly as we associate 
beauty with the Greek, civil law with the Roman, and 
religious statute with the Jew, do we associate free re- 
ligion and therefore freedom itself with the founders of 
this Republic. 

Benjamin Franklin jokingly suggested that the eagle 
being a rapacious bird was not a fitting emblem of the 
new Republic, but he, as well as his compatriots, knew 
that the reason for selecting the eagle for the insignia of 
the United States was in its suggestion of liberty. It was 
the " bird of freedom/' circling high above all others, and 
building its nest in inaccessible and unapproachable moun- 
tain pinnacles. 

It would be a simple task to march down through 
American history and see how in every time of darkness 
there was raised the illuminated beacon of liberty. In 
1620 it was a free soul; in 1776 it was a free soil; in 1812 
it was a free sea; in 1861 it was a free people; in 1898 it 
was a free hemisphere; and God grant that in 1917 the 



260 The Undying Torch 

light of world-freedom may be dawning ! " The dominion 
of the free " shall be of world-wide significance. 

The soul, then, of America is shown to be the devotion 
of its people to the principles and institutions of political 
and civil liberty. 

It is a solemnizing reflection that America at this hour 
faces the danger of losing her own soul. Rome and 
Greece yielded to tyrants, and the lights of their ancient 
republics flickered out. Spain lost her soul through pride. 
Britain has partly failed in this quest for complete liber- 
ation through her tendency to compromise. France 
yielded her ferociously won freedom to the seductions of 
Napoleon. Shall American historians in the future record 
of us that we have sold our soul to a false prosperity? We 
have grown steadily and enormously rich until our re- 
sources are more than equal to those of the two greatest 
empires of the world, Great Britain and Russia, combined. 
Shall we hesitate to draw the sword for fear of spending 
our resources, and, in the refusal, put a period to the long 
and consistent record of American sympathy for the 
liberal life of the world that constitutes the essence of 
American political treasure ? 

What is the moral problem of this hour? It is, first, 
shall America fight or flinch? And as I endeavor to 
answer this question let me say, first, we ought not to fight 
because we have been wantonly attacked. We have been 
wantonly attacked ! Only the blind fail to see this. Only 
those who have become stupefied by the countless horrors 
of this war, as already recorded, have failed to feel the 
point of the German dagger searching in the breast of the 
national life. The true Americans have blushed and 



The Soul of America 261 

grieved and burned in high indignation during the past two 
years as the German government has with studied con- 
tempt and effrontery insulted the high traditions of the 
land. But this should not constitute the deciding reason 
for our entering into this war. Nor should we enter it 
because we have been vilely conspired against. This 
motive would be our justification before an international 
tribunal, but there is a higher tribunal still, where we feel 
we must justify ourselves in so solemn a matter as a decla- 
ration of war. Nor should we enter the war because we 
agree fully and completely with those who, in case we 
declare war on Germany, shall thus become our allies. 
I confess, however, to a thrill of exultation as I think of 
the possibility of our entering the war hand in hand with 
France, England, and Russia. For it was France who 
enabled us to win in '76; it was Russia who, in the 
dreadful days of '61-65, when war with England threat- 
ened while the war with the South was being fought, who 
placed a huge fleet of warships in San Francisco harbor 
and another in New York harbor as a reminder to the 
enemies of the Republic that in case the Union was at- 
tacked in its hour of extremity, Russia would have to be 
dealt with. And those of us who participated in the 
Spanish-American War cannot forget how blood proved 
to be thicker than water and the whole sentiment of the 
English people warmly rallied to the side of America and 
effectively prevented the German sympathy with Spain 
from taking practical shape in active intervention in her 
behalf. 

The year 1917 will give us an opportunity to return to 
France a tithe of her loan to us, to return to Russia an 



262 The Undying Torch 

equivalent for its sympathy in '61, and to give to hard- 
beset England an even greater evidence that old sores are 
healed than she gave us in 1898. 

But, as I have said, it is not because we fully agree with 
our future allies that we should enter this conflict. At 
some points we should in good conscience take issue with 
them. It is not according to the spirit of America that 
we should endorse, for instance, the shooting of women, 
accused falsely or truly of being German spies, and the 
French have committed this offense. Neither do true 
Americans endorse the English plan of starving a civilian 
population into submission to shut off supplies from 
soldiers in the field, as justifiable. To bring armies to the 
point of surrender by the pressure of starvation upon 
their wives and children is a method that should be 
scorned by all Americans. No, neither the insults we have 
received nor the conspiracies that have been formed 
against us, nor an absolute and entire agreement with the 
allies in their aims and methods, can fully justify us in 
entering this conflict. 

It is because the good of humanity demands the destruc- 
tion of governments which are barbarous and tyrannical 
that we should move in this matter to declare ourselves 
to be in a state of war with Germany. As in other days 
we were against the king of England, so today should we 
be against the Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs. They are 
an offense to God and humanity. Let us in the name of 
all that is spiritual in American life rally to complete 
the work that such Germans as Cart Schurz began in the 
immortal year of %8. The hour has struck when the re- 
fusal to fight will constitute a repudiation of the ideals 



The Soul of America 263 

which have hitherto made America worthy of a Christian 
free man's love ! 

It only remains to be said that in this time of national 
crisis we must remember that the peril of the nation is 
the peril of the individual and the virtue of the nation is 
the virtue of the individual. We should go into this strug- 
gle in the spirit of men whose faith is in God, whose 
consciences are clear and void of offense toward men, and 
whose lives have been renewed by Divine grace. The 
choicest treasure accruing to the nation in its lengthen- 
ing history has been the consecration to its public life, in 
the army and navy and the councils of the State, of 
Christian men. The very fact that we are predominantly 
Christian prevents our blatantly declaring ourselves for- 
mally so as a government, and the crisis upon us demands 
nothing less than a revisiting of the altars of Christian 
faith! God give us another Washington, another Farra- 
gut, another Howard ; a second Sumner, another Grant of 
stedfast purpose and simple faith, and another Lincoln, 
the man of peace who dared to lead a nation to battle ! 



An Jtotlfl dfjrtBttatt 



An anemic Christianity is always abhorrent. Paul re- 
minds us that the state bears not the sword in vain. Both 
the Bible and human experience are opposed to the ultra- 
pacifistic doctrines of today — the denial of the principle of 
force in human life. 

Jim Borree was but one of a gallery of militant Chris- 
tians whose portraits hang upon the walls of my memory. 
The first soldier to scale the walls of Peking was Calvin 
Titus, a Christian lad. The second man to break into the 
San Juan block-house was one of the most devoted Chris- 
tian men I have known in the army. One of the great 
experiences of my life was a forty-five day journey on an 
army transport with Gen. Charles Bird in command of all 
the transportation of the Spanish-American War. He 
always carried a worn piece of paper in his pocket, covered 
with the names of men for whom he was praying, many of 
whom he led to Christ. 

And America has not forgotten that staunch Christian, 
Captain Philip, of the battleship Texas, who in the midst 
of his triumph in the naval battle off Santiago, stopped the 
cheers of his men and said, " Don't cheer, boys ; the poor 
fellows are dying." 




An 31mUi (Etjrtattatt 
(A IftHagan Utmnrg) 

HE diminishing smoke of the " Warren " 
stained the sky-line of the Jolo Sea, and I 
was left to Iloilo and my task as Army 
Secretary for Panay. 
True, I had been introduced to the Gen- 
eral and the Adjutant and had secured temporary 
quarters with an acting steward in the storeroom of the 
Brigade Hospital. I was thus assured of a place for my 
cot and an occasional meal. But I had found the town 
roofless and smoke-blackened and no quarters available 
for our work, and being strange to red tape and army 
regulations, I had within the past forty-eight hours suc- 
ceeded in butting my head against the United States mili- 
tary government not once nor twice. Then, too, my salary 
check was cheerfully touring the Orient the while I was 
nervously fingering my last dollar and wondering how 
much a gold-filled watch would bring in the Visayan 
market. 

In such a mood and muddle, Borree first loomed upon 
me. I use the nautical term advisedly, for he was a 
generous six feet in height and built to stand firmly on his 
sturdy legs. His sun-burned face was strong-lined with 
resolution and lighted with a frank kindliness inherited 
from a Teuton ancestry, which was also responsible for 
the blue of his eyes and the yellow-white of his hair. 
t 267 



268 The Undying Torch 

Attired in the usual white of the civilian employee, but 
crowned with a campaign hat, his garb foretokened the 
information he soon gave me that he had come to the 
Islands as a volunteer soldier, but remained as a civilian 
in the employment of the " Q. M. D." 

He at once offered me a share in his " shack " on the 
single credential of my triangle badge. I gladly accepted, 
and shared for some weeks a fairly commodious room in 
a house of Filipino construction — split bamboo floors, 
woven bamboo sides, corrugated iron roofing (perhaps 
filched from the destroyed warehouses of the city by 
the Filipino owner), and staggering high upon stilts in a 
vagabondish fashion at the edge of the strong-smelling 
tide-flats. It contained beside ourselves a Visayan family 
of three, separated from us by a flimsy partition. From 
this vantage point I did my best for the committee at New 
York and incidentally became acquainted with a genuine 
man. 

Borree, with his comrades of the California Regiment, 
had come from a baptism of roses in 'Frisco streets to the 
" slum " and hard-tack of Camp Dewey. He had en- 
joyed the excitement of the badly aimed Spanish bullets 
at Manila's capture and had afterward become useful to 
his superior through his knowledge of Mexican-Spanish. 
Between the Spanish-American and Filipino wars he had 
guarded prisoners, grumbled at rations (on one occasion 
picking a horseshoe from a can labeled " beef "!), ex- 
plored Manila and its vicinity, and stood his share of 
guard duty. 

He also wrote letters home and in one of them made a 
laudable attempt to allay the natural anxieties of his peo- 



An Iloilo Christian 269 

pie by drawing an alluring picture of tropical life. He 
depicted each " native son " as being rocked in a hammock 
slung under the shade of the graceful palms, fanned by 
the fairest of the Malayan senoritas, amused by obliging 
monkeys and talking parrots, and varying the regular 
army ration with an abundance of luscious fruit. This 
epistle brought him into the deadliest danger of his cam- 
paign. It reached his relieved parents, and soon appeared 
in the San Francisco papers with editorial commendation ; 
also, I believe, with the very hammocks and " native sons " 
caught in the very act by the special artist's pencil, and 
it had speedy result in effectually quelling the hero-wor- 
ship of the state. 

When, in course of time, this issue arrived in Manila 
simultaneously with a general epidemic of " 'dobe itch," 
dengue fever, bad weather, worse water, and unmitigated 
" slums," his laurel-defrauded comrades read with howls 
of rage and descended upon him without the formality 
of a round-robin. 

When Aguinaldo ringed the city with fire, Borree with 
all others hailed the excitement with real good cheer and 
did his share of the rice-paddy marching in the Laguna 
and Rio Grande valleys. Then when the Visayan expedi- 
tion went south to Iloilo and sharpshooters were needed to 
fend off bushwackers from the guns of Light Battery G, 
he was placed in command of twenty comrades and 
tripped cheerfully over the tropical lacing of Panay. Here 
he was of high value, for his prowess with a rifle was of 
the first order. In fact I have seen him daintily select 
with his eye a single coconut of a cluster in the lofty top 
of a palm, and snip its almost imperceptible stem with a 



270 The Undying Torch 

Smith and Wesson revolver, thus tumbling to our feet a 
delicious drink for the weary " hike." 

Skirmishes at Uoilo, Pavia, and Santa Barbara closed 
his enlistment with the credit that only the acrid atmos- 
phere of real fighting could give, and then, having seen 
his comrades off home for the Golden State, he bethought 
himself of his waiting sweetheart and looked about him 
for a chance to feather a nest for two, being fortified in 
this resolution by his knowledge of Spanish and an 
acquired veneer of the native dialect. 

Borree's sweetheart eventually came to him, because 
Iloilo harbor happened to be shallow and a sturdy man 
who could handle natives was needed to superintend the 
transfer of U. S. A. T. cargoes from transport to lighters 
far out in the blue of Iloilo Strait. Many men of many 
minds had been tried out by an anxious depot-quarter- 
master. Their biography ran something like this : 

Five thousand partially equipped and entirely hungry 
soldiers on shore; countless cases of all things needful 
in the deep hold of a steamer two miles from shore. On 
one side of that steamer a flatboat, on the other side native 
" cascoes " and " lorchas." In, out and over both trans- 
port and lighters a hundred or more Visayans acting like 
silly-pated ants. In supposed command of this most vital 
link in the Program of Expansion, a typical deck-hand 
driver of the tramp steamer variety. Then a quic^ suc- 
cession of one thousand irritating things. Orders mis- 
understood; cases misplaced or dropped, smashing, from 
the hoists ; wrong consignments unloaded ; slow responses 
from the donkey-engine and the rope-men at critical 
moments; hawsers cast off when the order was to make 



An Hoilo Christian 271 



fast ; Visayans two deep when not wanted and out of sight 
and hearing when wanted. Also a tropical sun drawing 
the very sap out of the deck-boards and making the shore- 
line dance a maddening jig. Then an explosion of the 
mental make-up of the Boss. Narrowed eyes in a blazing 
face; filthy oaths snapping through tobacco-stained teeth; 
passionate gestures ; bawled orders in an unknown tongue ; 
a staggering fist-blow in the face of a native, smashing 
him limp across the deck ; then sulky Visayans muttering 
and shirking; a costly chartered transport delayed for 
days ; company officers on shore saying bitter things about 
unhonored requisitions; angry privates swearing at the 
monotonous company-mess, all over the face of Panay; 
the commanding general inquiring in stiff phrases of the 
Q. M. D., and the Q. M. D. out hunting for a new steve- 
dore! 

Into all this misery, mark the entrance of my friend, 
joyfully discovered by the quartermaster and salaried in a 
manner promising matrimony within a year. Behold him, 
standing over the open hatchways, in a dirty uniform of 
trousers, shirt, and shoes only, a strong hand ready for a 
lever, a rope, or a case-corner, and ordering rapidly in 
Spanish. See a miraculous quickening among the brown 
men at his Avante! Avante! Hear him also sputtering 
out fragments of Visayan. " Copra and coconuts, what 
an Americano ! " Note, too, the absence of oaths, of 
passion, of attitudes. Can it be possible, Senors, that an 
American can work himself and a hundred men in tropic 
heat without a trip-hammer accompaniment of damn- 
damn-damn? 

Not that he never became excited. One day, while 



272 The Undying Torch 

standing over the forward hatch on the upper deck, word 
was passed up to him from below that one of the steamer's 
officers had struck a Filipino down in the hold. He tore 
down into the depths and, seizing the astonished white 
man, slammed him against the bulkhead. Pinning him 
helplessly there, he scowled into his frightened face and 
said: 

" If you touch another of these men with a finger- 
weight you reckon with me. I'm in command here, and 
I don't allow my men to be abused by beach-combers and 
lime-juicers. Understand ? " 

What wonder that with this type of a Christian to boss 
them, the Visayans brought the yellow cases up, out and 
over the side with the regularity of the buckets on a 
water-wheel? I have seen Borree at his prayers, but I 
imagine the God of justice was as well pleased with him 
as he breathed his hot indignation in the face of an abusive 
mate. 

It would have converted Boston to " benevolent as- 
similation ° to have witnessed Borree on the dock after a 
hard day's work, handing out the Spanish pesos to each 
eager Visayan individually and thus insuring strict justice. 
They eddied about him in a cheerful mob — Patricios, 
Domingos, Gregorios, Aguinaldos. They all looked alike 
to me, but he seemed to know them all and picked them 
out by their faces, their stature, their gait, their gestures, 
voices, attitudes. 

It did not surprise me to see evidences of real affection 
for him. A crew of men, for instance, who had worked 
all day handling cargo, were never unwilling to man a 
boat and row " Don James " and his " amigos " up the 



An Iloilo Christian 273 

Jaro River in the cool of the evening. They could not 
be persuaded to accept payment. 

On one occasion Borree had swung his tank-boat across 
the strait to connect with the limestone spring on the 
Guimaras shore. He was weaponless and alone among 
Filipinos on an ungarrisoned island. While directing his 
men who were making a pipe-line from the shore to the 
flat-boat, he was approached by a committee who stated 
that they had always admired his physical prowess and 
had taken the liberty of sending for the champion wrestler 
of Panay. Would he condescend to a trial of strength in 
a near-by field? Then it was the Borree recalled with 
satisfaction that Jim Jefferies and he had attended the 
same district school in California. Inspired by this re- 
flection, he stepped into the ring of natives, and laying hold 
of a gigantic but loosely-built Visayan, who smilingly ad- 
vanced upon him, he threw him over his shoulder without 
ceremony to a fall so decisive as to end the bout then 
and there, amid the enthusiasm of a strangely sports- 
manlike crowd. 

At my transfer from Panay to Luzon, I left the slender 
affairs of the Panay Army Association work in the care 
of Borree. The simplicity and vigor of his Christian 
manliness was my best guarantee that our headquarters 
would remain open until my successor arrived. Or, per- 
haps I should confess that, unable to get a man detailed 
in charge of our rented quarters, I was about to close them 
up temporarily, but was dissuaded by Borree, who could 
not bear to see the only decent resort for soldiers in 
Iloilo shut up while the canteen and dives preyed upon 
the money and morals of the men. So, for some weeks, 



274 The Undying Torch 

he and a recently arrived missionary represented our work 
in Panay. Naturally, I corresponded with him from 
Manila, and in this way I received several characteristic 
epistles, one at least being quite amusing. 

Knowing Borree's militant conception of Christianity, I 
had written him to avoid all strenuous trouble both for 
his own and the work's sake. In his reply he thanked me 
heartily and mentioned with strong disapproval the case 
of a young preacher who had foolishly enlisted in the 
Hospital Corps and was always causing trouble because he 
could not get accustomed to the change from the status of 
an honored and privileged calling to the narrow, stiff life 
of a private in the Philippine service. Borree went on to 
say that he had counseled the young man to be very meek 
and gentle, for only thus could the cause of Christ be 
advanced. As to his own affairs, he assured me that his 
life since I had left had been ultrapeaceful and only dis- 
turbed by a single ripple not worth mentioning. 

I found out later the nature of this gentle ripple. A 
renegade Englishman, an old enemy of mine, was acting 
as chief of natives. This Englishman was a beach- 
comber who had floated in from unknown parts and 
secured the position of chief because no American officer 
would accept the office without protest. He could be 
seen at all times strutting about the streets, his coat at the 
back pulled up to show a huge Colt's revolver on his hip. 
He early developed symptoms of " graftitis " and com- 
municated the disease rapidly to his followers. His pet 
method was to intimidate the Chinese and Filipino shop- 
keepers along Calle Real with threats of imprisonment, 
leering into their faces with a meaning Quere usted 



An Iloilo Christian 275 

calaboose? that sent a veritable shiver down their spines. 
In their eyes his star and revolver stood for the great 
American Government itself. Of course, he gracefully 
allowed himself to be bought off, and like his noble prede- 
cessors in New York and Philadelphia, he became no 
poorer as the days went by. 

At last Borree, who had clashed with the nondescript 
Iloilo police before, received word from an agitated shop- 
keeper that the chief had appeared in his store and in- 
formed him that he could take his choice between going to 
the " calaboose " under the charge of being a former " in- 
surgent " or paying to the " government " a handsome 
sum in pesos. As this charge could have been brought 
safely against the entire police force itself, Borree needed 
no assistance in fathoming the chief's pleasant method. 
He slipped on his revolver belt and accompanied his little 
brown friend to his shop. Here a little later a Visayan 
sergeant of police, who entered with a squad of privates at 
his heels, found him carelessly lounging against the 
counter. Knowing Borree's status among the natives, the 
sergeant eyed him a little uneasily, but passed him by and 
laid hold of his victim. 

Witnesses say that just here Borree straightened up and 
said : " What are you doing in here, sergeant ? This man 
is my friend." 

The sergeant replied with volubility that the victim was 
a bad, a wicked fellow, in fact, an " insurrecto " of a most 
malignant stripe, and he, the sergeant had been ordered by 
the Captain Grande to place him quickly behind the walls 
of Fort Iloilo. 

As he explained he dragged his protesting prisoner to 



276 The Undying Torch 



the shop door, where his three armed subordinates closed 
in with alacrity. 

Then did the gathering people behold a marvelous thing 
— a sergeant of the Omnipotent Police Force flattened 
into the road by an almost invisible blow, and as the dust- 
explosion caused by his somersault thinned away, the 
crouched figure of Don James in the doorway, a revolver 
flipping from under his coat to a steady bead upon the 
demoralized privates. 

" Drop your guns in the road ! Pronto ! " His voice 
rang with a menace they dared not disregard. 

Three sulky figures in gray fingered their belt-clasps 
and dropped three amusingly large " 45 Colts " into the 
hot dust at their feet. 

" Vamoose ! " 

They disappeared in the crowd. Then, amid the profuse 
thanks of his delivered friend and the friends of his 
delivered friend and all the latent enemies of the Iloilo 
Police Force, Borree gave orders for the removal of the 
still unconscious sergeant to the hospital. He then picked 
up the four revolvers and wended his way to police head- 
quarters. Unfortunately for the dramatic completeness 
of this story, the renegade chief was not in. The desk- 
sergeant received the revolvers, however, with most grati- 
fying amazement. 

As to the unconscious Assistant Grafter, he was dead 
to all sensation for something more than twenty-four 
hours, and ever after lived more thoughtfully among his 
fellows. 



Apprttiix 



Kppmbxx 



PASTORS OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF 

PASADENA 

Rev. S. S. Fisk. 

Commenced November 14, 1883. Closed May 1, 1885. 
Pastor Fisk left the church on account of the ill health 
of Mrs. Fisk. 

Rev. T. N. Lord. 

Commenced March 19, 1886. Closed August 2, 1887. Pastor 
Lord was compelled to resign on account of his own ill 
health. 



Rev. C. E. Harris. 

Commenced January 22, 1888. Closed September 25, 1894. 
Pastor Harris died on the date last given. 



Rev. C. T. Douglass. 

Commenced April 21, 1895. Closed February 13, 1898. 
Pastor Douglass left the pastorate upon being appointed 
Corresponding Secretary and General Missionary of the 
State Convention. 

Rev. Frank W. Woods. 

Commenced September 1, 1898. Closed May 15, 1900. 
Pastor Woods died on this latter date. 

Rev. C. H. Hobart. 

Commenced February 3, 1901. Closed December 1, 1904. 

279 



280 Appendix 



Rev. Albert Hatcher Smith. 

Commenced March 1, 1905. Closed October 1, 1912. Dur- 
ing the pastorate of Doctor Smith the Rev. B. B. Jacques 
acted as associate pastor from February 5, 1911, to March 
21, 1912. He then took the pastorate of Calvary Baptist 
Church, Pasadena, hitherto known as the Brown Memorial 
Chapel, a mission of the First Church. 

Rev. Selden W. Cummings. 

Commenced December 1, 1912. Closed January 2, 1921. 
Doctor Cummings resigned to become pastor of the 
Ruggles Street Church of Boston, after a long and suc- 
cessful pastorate in Pasadena, extending through the try- 
ing days of the war, during which he was noted for his 
patriotic efforts. A farewell reception was tendered 
Doctor Cummings on January 7, 1921. The Rev. Bryant 
Wilson acted as assistant pastor from January 18, 1914, 
to September 13, 1914. 

The Rev. Frank Durham was assistant pastor from No- 
vember 4, 1914, to June 1, 1917. 

The Rev. Lewis E. Durham became assistant September 21, 
1917, and continued for one year in that capacity. 

Rev. W. B. Percival became assistant pastor on February 
15, 1919; after nearly three years of service he was com- 
pelled to resign on account of ill health. 

Rev. John Marvin Dean. 

Commenced November 12, 1921. 

Between the pastorates of Doctor Cummings and Doctor 
Dean, Dr. Orrin P. Gifford supplied the pulpit of the 
First Church with great acceptance. 

On the resignation of Assistant Pastor Percival, the 
Rev. Lewis D. Cruthers served for a short time as 
assistant to Doctor Dean. Upon his resignation, the 
Rev. Herbert Handel became associate pastor begin- 
ning his work November 8, 1922. 



Appendix 281 



Ministers of Christ, noted for their devoted service, 
have frequently appeared upon the rolls of the member- 
ship of the First Church of Pasadena. Dr. Augustus H. 
Strong, while never a member of this body, for years 
attended its services during his winter visits to California. 
He died in Pasadena and his funeral service was con- 
ducted by Doctor Dean. His memory is precious to 
Pasadena Baptists. 



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